Asteroid

After John 17:26

It was the asteroid, coming

seemingly from nowhere,

hitting or landing in an out-of-the-way

place with tremendous force

and impact, but almost unnoticed 

farther away, until the shock waves

and the wind and the waves

radiating from the center

embraced everything it their path,

and everything was in their path,

until nothing was untouched,

nothing left the same,

nothing left unchanged, fundamentally,

even the rocks and mountains,

the columned palaces and temples,

everything, everything was engulfed

in a wave of love,

everything, to the point that

the force could be resisted but

it could not be denied,

it could not be stopped.

Photograph by Bryan Goff via Unsplash. Used with permission.

An odd gift

After John 17:26

It’s a gift, to be sure,

but an odd one for all that.

It’s a gift that, as soon

as you receive it, you are

to give it away. And yet

it remains, even as 

you give it away;

it doesn’t disappear,

it doesn’t diminish as 

it’s handed away; even 

more oddly, the gift grows

as it’s given away, and 

the more it’s given away,

the more it grows for the giver.

It may be love.

It may be light.

It may be both and likely is.

But the point is the giving,

the whole point, and

nothing but the point.

This sounds like a riddle.

Photograph by Joanna Kosinka via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"Journey on the Hard Side of Miracles" by Steven Stiles

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a new kind of evangelism arose in the United States. It took a number of forms, but it was collectively referred to as the “Jesus Movement,” with strong influences from the hippie movement. It was characterized by street evangelism, one-on-one interaction, and musical performances. On film, nothing captured the Jesus Movement better than the play (and movie adaptation) of Godspell; the play debuted off-Broadway in 1971 and the movie in 1973.

In the early 1970s, Steven Stiles was a young man active in his church in Santa Cruz, California. But he wasn’t a typical member of a rather traditional church. He had a heart for reaching his own generation, and he had a heart for reaching those caught in addiction to alcohol and drugs. And rather than waiting for people to find the church, he went out and found the people.

The story of that outreach is his book Journey on the Hard Side of Miracles. Reading it is like taking a journey back to my own youth and becoming a Christian.

Stiles emphasizes the traveling bus ministry he was part of led for several years. Young people from his church would board a bus and head to other parts of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and points east. They would do street outreach, perform with their band, hold Bible studies, and other activities. They opened their arms to all who would listen, including hippies, drug addicts, alcoholics, and other “undesirables.”

Their growing numbers at their church, rising faster than traditional members, inevitably led to conflict. A new pastor, backed by the elders, ended the ministry.

So, it moved to new quarters.

"Greenie," the first ministry bus

When Stiles talks about miracles, you have to wonder what he saw here. While not in the same class as healing lepers or the blind, things happened in his ministry that can’t simply be explained away as coincidences or lucky breaks. Like finding a building that had already been sold to another group, and the building becoming available; being led to walk in an open field miles from nowhere and discovering an industrial belt that would exactly replace a broken fan belt on a bus; being led away from one area to another, and discovering a national park staffed by Christians who were praying for a music outreach group to visit that very day.

It’s about miracles, and it’s about trusting God. But more than anything, Journey on the Hard Side of Miracles is about people’s lives being changed.

Dr. Steven Stiles

Stiles’s years in his outreach ministry became, in a sense, his professional career. He taught addiction studies for 10 years at Western Seminary in San Jose, California, and for 30 years at Bethany University in Scotts Valley, California. He served at the Clinical Director at New Life Community Services in Santa Cruz, California. He’s also the author of Thorns in the Heart: A Christian’s Guide to Dealing with Addiction, Recovery for Codependency, and Gotchyaa: Con Artists in the Church. He received his D.Min. degree from American Baptist University of the West.

Journey on the Hard Side of Miracles is a good reminder of what it means to trust God, even when that trust looks misplaced or downright crazy in human eyes. It’s also a story of people in ministry being used to reach people, including many considered “irredeemable,” and what happens in the lives of all concerned.

Top photograph by Cassie Boca via Unsplash. Used with permission.

John Pollock’s “George Whitefield: The Evangelist”

If I asked you to name the fathers or founders of the United States, you might say George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. If you considered the Constitution as one of the founding documents, you might add James Madison and Alexander Hamilton.

What about George Whitefield?

Who?

George Whitefield (1714-1770) is associated with John and Charles Wesley as one of the key figures in what is known as the Great Awakening, the religious revival in both Britain and the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. Whitefield initiated the practice of open-air preaching – out of necessity, when this Church of England minister was banned from preaching in British churches (he aroused “enthusiasm” and attracted “lowlife” like coal miners, who had never attended church before).

John Pollock, in George Whitefield: The Evangelist, tells the man’s story, but he does it in an unusual way. First, this isn’t a standard biography; it reads more like a novel. Yet it’s based on reports, writings, papers, sermons, and contemporary accounts, so that it is “biographical.”

Second, Pollock starts the story with Whitefield at Oxford as a young man, just beginning his ministry. His earlier life is slightly referred to throughout the book but not described in any detail. For example, we only know of Whitefield’s birthplace of Gloucester, England, because of his visits home and ministry in the area.

And third, it is Whitefield the evangelist who is the focus, as opposed to Whitefield the man. This is not a full account of his life but it is a detailed account of his evangelistic outreach in England and America.

Whitefield made some 13 trips to America, starting in the colony of Georgia but eventually including all of the colonies. Benjamin Franklin knew him well. Franklin didn’t embrace Whitefield’s message of salvation but the two men were good friends and Franklin became his American publisher.

In his younger days, Whitefield was slender and not terribly impressive physically. Many friends and critics alike cited his “squinting,” a result of being cross-eyed. But his voice was captivating; listeners often compared it to music. And it could carry – Franklin estimated that up to 30,000 people could actually hear him clearly in Philadelphia.

George Whitefield

His first open-air sermon was near Bristol, England. Denied the use of the churches’ pulpits (despite his being an ordained Church of England minister), he stood in an open field and preached to miners leaving their work in the coal mines. He had no idea of whether they were listening or not until he saw the white streaks on their coal-dust faces; the men had been moved to tears. A gathering of a few hundred soon became a gathering of thousands.

Pollock points how the close relationship Whitefield has with the Wesley brothers, but they became estranged for a time. The Wesleys would break with the Church of England to found Methodism, while Whitefield remained within the C of E even if it often banned him from speaking.

John Pollock

Whitefield had a phenomenal impact in America; millions would eventually hear his message from both himself and the evangelists he inspired. And he kindled an American awareness of the idea that all men were equal in the sight of God, a belief that became common throughout the colonies and would set the stage for the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution.

Pollock (1924-2012) originally published George Whitefield in 1973; it was reissued in 2007 and more recently as an e-book. He was also the author of The Apostle: The Life of Paul; D.L. Moody: Moody without Sankey; Wilberforce; Hudson Taylor and Maria: A Match Made in Heaven; The Cambridge Seven: The True Story of Ordinary Men Used in No Ordinary Way; Gordon of Khartoum; and several other books. He was also an official biographer of Billy Graham.

George Whitefield is a well-told story. The Great Awakening and Whitefield had a major influence on the creation of the United States, and Pollock explains how that happened.

Related:

Christian History: George Whitefield

My review of If You Can Keep It by Eric Metaxas.

Painting: George Whitefield Preaching in Bolton 1750, oil on canvas by Thomas Walley; Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, United Kingdom.