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Friends United Meeting |
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July/August 1999
Into the Light
Friends are inviting people into fellowships where Jesus is known, loved and obeyed
By Ben Richmond
"I'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. I started attending [Farmland Friends] with my therapist. The first time I walked in it was like time tripping. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that I wanted it. It felt very, very safe. The presence of the Lord saturated your whole being. "That church has saved me; it has saved my soul."
Tammy Mangus is now participating in a Bible study group and helping with the youth program at Farmland Friends in Indiana. A few years ago, she was at loose ends in a confusing and hurtful world. The joy in her voice as she tells her story confirms that she knows what she knows about the reality of God's healing and saving presence in her life.
"Sometimes it is very, very hard. Then I go back to church and tell them what I need. The older members are full of love. You just know that they are very heart-felt people. From time to time they tell me, 'Tammy, I'm praying for you.' They are prayer warriors.
"To listen to them when they pray has helped me a great deal. I have a 21-year-old son who is in jail, and they are very supportive. They don't treat me like a victim. It's o.k. to express your pain and have comfort, but it is time to grow up."
Tammy finds comfort in the fact that relationships in the church aren't one-way. When women from the church come to the "Y" where she works and she gets to put them through their paces, she sees another side of them. "That's pretty neat."
Tammy's advice to Friends: "I'm also a survivor of incest. I have dealt, pretty much, with my anger at God. Today I think that the church has to be prepared to deal with people like me."
Since Jack Holliday came to Farmland Friends about eight years ago, there have been 50 conversions. As Tammy says, the church is "taking off now."
"There are so many dynamics in this thing of people coming to the Lord," says Jack. "We've had people saved at prayer meeting, people saved at revival meetings, people come into the office, or saved on their front porch. There is no one way. People come to you and ask you questions. That gives you the chance to say, 'Here is the way you can bring your life back to a place where there is some normalcy to it.' Then you share Christ and say, 'This is the best way there is to change your life.'
"You earn the right to be heard. There are a couple of the things I make very clear to the congregation. One is my passion for the lost. It is my passion that people receive Christ as Savior. Maybe, they get tired of hearing about grace, forgiveness. But I've experienced it in my own life and it is my passion. The second thing I make clear is that I love them. No matter what they have done, I love them and I love their friends. I call on them in their homes, in the hospital, wherever. And this gives me an opening to talk about Christ. I talk to people in the community who aren't saved as if they are part of the church, because I expect that, one day, they will be."
Jack came to Friends from an unchurched background. The key was Rowena, his future wife, who was a member of Walnut Ridge Friends. On one occasion, they had a "date" at a church revival. The evangelist made an altar call, but Jack said no. "I didn't have any feeling about it, no sense of my heart beating fast or anything." But because Rowena wanted to go up, Jack went along because "it was the thing to do." When it seemed as if he had probably stayed at the altar a decent amount of time, he turned to walk away thinking there was nothing there for him. "Suddenly," Jack says, "I felt a great burden roll off my shoulders. Then I knew there was a God. I'd like to say that 'I prayed through' but it wasn't like that: God just did it for me. Maybe God knew that it was the only way to get through to me."
There were many ups and downs in Jack's spiritual journey before he became an effective evangelist, but this was the start. I asked him if he gives an altar call every Sunday and he replied, "I ask for some kind of response every time. Often it is nothing heavysometimes just raising their hand, or standing up where they are; sometimes an invitation to come up front. If you don't give people the opportunity to change their lives, then you wonder, why are we doing this? God is always giving us the opportunity to change our lives."
Jack speaks eagerly about the many people whom he has seen come into the church. They may have been rough or tough, but, over time, God shapes them. He introduced me to Margaret Hinsley, a single lady who came from an unchurched home. She was saved at a special meeting at Farmland Friends in October 1995.
A woman from the church invited her to the session. There was a special evangelist that night, but all Margaret remembers is that he was preaching about sin. "There were so many emotions it is sort of a blur." For Margaret, the important thing was that she knew "it was time to move, to make a decision."
The other thing that stands out was the women of the church. "I saw a peace about them. I knew I was living in sin because of childhood experiences with my grandparents. I don't know how to express it other than [that they showed] a genuine acceptance of who I was."
I asked Margaret, "How has this changed you?"
"Completely. I have a better job than I have ever had in my life. I'm at peace with how things are. I truly love the people at that churchthey have all been so good to me. I have joy and peace, but that doesn't express to a non-believer what I have inside.
"I share with people at work, and the women at work are alright with it. I am not overbearingbut I want people to know where I stand with the Lord."
Just fifteen miles away, at Winchester Friends, Ron and Pam Ferguson are pastors. They, too, have stories to tell of people's lives changing as they come into relationship with God. "We see evangelism as a lifestyle, a way of living." Ron and Pam are Friends from Northwest Yearly Meeting, who served for nine years with Mennonite Central Committee in East Africa. "I like structure," says Ron, "but Africa knocked the edges off of that. Information [about the Gospel] has its place. People need that, but evangelism isn't a program. Communicating the Gospel should be as natural as the air we breathe. We've made it something that isn't natural. I tell people, 'The real work of ministry happens not in church services but out in the community where you have a congregation I never see.'
"I keep thinking of Cleo and Dianne. For much of the past decade they have essentially pastored many of their co-workers at the casket factory.
"On Sunday morning, I see a hundred people, most of whom have been Christians for a long time. They don't usually need an altar call. If we come together in sheer gratitude for God, and sit in silence and hear one another's gratitude, Christ will get His work done. It doesn't matter if Ron has a bad day preaching," says Ron, "or if the musicians have a bad day. Christ isn't going to have a bad day!"
There is a little country meeting over in Ohio, called Hardins Creek Friends. It is part of Wilmington Yearly Meeting. When Tony Tompkins came as pastor fifteen years ago the meeting was averaging eight people at worship. Now, Tony says, they have 50 or 60 on an average Sunday. "We have a lot of younger people. Younger couples have children and that increases your meeting! They are from every different background-factory workers, farmers."
Like the other pastors I talked with, Tony said, "I can't tell you what I've done. We haven't run contests. We've had numerous people who just come."
Tonya and Rodney Throckmorton were like that. Rodney is a construction worker, Tonya homeschools, and the whole family farms. Tonya says, "I just feel like the Lord lead us there. It was a little country church that we would drive by. We didn't know anyone there. One Sunday we decided to stop and we've been going there ever since. Everyone was very warm and receptive."
Tony stresses the informal nature of the worship at Hardins Creek. "We don't give altar calls. I see one type of church that spends all its time on social issues. Another type is evangelical and the preacher gets up and tells everyone how awful they are and they need to come to the altar and get saved. I got warped by that as a childsaw many people who came to the altar one week and had to go back again the following week. I hope to do something in the middle."
Tony also says that they "don't stress a lot of Quakerism" (except for business procedure "which we do by the book"). "Most of the people, including myself, are veterans, patriotic people."
But when I asked Tonya what difference it had made to her, coming from an unchurched background, I heard some things that sounded very Quaker. Speaking of her family's spiritual experience, she says, "The difference is night and day. We continue to grow. So often we want to do everything at once, but we've learned the Lord takes you one day at a time. I look at life completely differently now. The ministry of the Holy Spirit has become more real to me every day. Our relationship with the Lord is like any other relationship: it takes two. You've got to learn to listen.
"I've never been to a church of another denomination, but I really feel that the open worship part is different. That is where we see the Spirit leading during the worship, which He does regularly. It is different, week by week. When the Spirit leads, you know it."
Grace Community Friends of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, started just this April. Patapsco Preparative Meeting started two years ago in Columbia, Maryland. Iowa and Baltimore Yearly Meetings are different in many ways, but these "church plants" share some similarities. In both cases, existing Meetings set off a core group from an existing church to start new worship groups. Most of the attenders were already Friends, but many of them had become inactive in recent years. These new meetings are restoring the spiritual lives of Friends who had become "unchurched."
It is a similar story at Battle Creek Friends in North Carolina Yearly Meeting. I talked with Daniel Thames, their new pastor. Two years ago, they had nine in worship. Last fall when he started, they were up to 16, and now attendance has grown to about 30.
"I took a course on church growth and evangelism," he told me. "They said to connect people into small groups. Well, we are a small group! We can give people personal attention. In Sunday school, when a woman mentioned a problem, we were able to talk with her and pray for her right then. People who have come and stayed have found that we are accepting and that we have a genuine love for each other."
One of the keys for their meeting has been their practice of serving a meal every other month at a nearby homeless shelter. It has given them a sense of purpose and excitement. "We have better attendance at that than we do at Sunday worship."
Ken Stockbridge had not been attending weekly meeting before the Patapsco Meeting was founded. His mother was raised a Friend, and his first experience of Quaker worship was at his grandmother's memorial service, "a mystical experience." However, he did not feel led to join any of the well-established meetings in the area, so his primary church contact was the activities of various Young Adult Friends groups.
"In the last two years," since Patapsco started, says Ken, "where I have grown is in more clearly learning how to discern God's will, and how I can follow it. Even in my mundane experiences. I talk a lot more than I would have 10 years ago about prayer without ceasing. My task is to feel God's presence in every moment. I'm not saying that I'm any good at it, but it is part of my consciousness.
"So many evangelists seem to focus on a seemingly easy formula: to confess that you are a sinner and confess that you have accepted Christ as savior. But what does that mean? It is easy to come to a point where you are willing to say that. But what do the words mean? Is my life aligned with Love, with the source of all healing? I can't really point to any specific changes in my life, but I feel like I've deepened my connection with God. And that's the real point, isn't it?"
Chris Miller grew up with a Wesleyan background, raised by her grandparents until, at age 13, she went to live with her dad. She wasn't involved in church. Then she got married, adopted Amanda and Jeremy, the children of her husband's first marriage. Parenting has not always been easy, particularly as she is just 13 years older than her adopted children. Their father's mother took them to church at Amboy Friends.
Then, on October 11, 1997, Jeremy attempted suicide. "After Jeremy's suicide attempt," Chris says, "the church stood in and filled a void in our lives." Jeremy was life-lined to Parkview Hospital. "Within a week, the preacher was there, the youth group was there. I'll bet I had 50 cards sent just by people from the church. When I came to the church, I was welcomed unconditionally."
Chris started attending worship in the February after Jeremy's incident. "I'm just overwhelmed. I worked at the grocery store. I knew everybody. People would say, 'Chris, we're praying for you.' I'd always put them off before, but when I went [to church], I felt so at home. God saved our son. The Lord has really touched our lives, and gotten me to see that life is not worth living without Him. I am loving it.
"The first time I was in church, I was overwhelmed with hugs. I said to the Lord, 'If this is where you want our family, show me.' It wasn't a week later that Mary Ann Martens said, 'Chris we're looking for a new person to lead our opening exercises.' I came home and said, 'Chris, this is it.' Since then I've been so on fire to help these little people.
"It brings back so many memories from my childhood of a passion to serve the Lord. I really want to be the best I can be for Him. I want people to see me and say, 'Hey, she has something I want!'"
Chris says that all her life she knew the Gospel. But what counts is the relationship with God, and that is what she didn't have. Still, she affirms, "All that time, while I was running around being a wild-child, He knew and protected me."
Perhaps, evangelism is simply putting flesh to the love that God has been extending all the time, anyway.
Ben Richmond grew up in a Christian home, but first encountered Jesus Christ in a personal way while attending a liberal, unprogrammed meeting in Oregon. He is managing editor of Quaker Life, and lives in Richmond, Indiana, with his wife Jody. Daughter Jessica is at Earlham College. Son Peter is planning to enter Purdue next fall, when son Christopher starts high school.
Copyright (c) 1999 Friends United Meeting
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