Archive: At the Lord’s Table

By George Anderson with Ruth A. Snyder

This pastor found Christ through the witness of a laymen’s luncheon in June when I arrived at First Avenue North and North Broadway in downtown Billings. The luncheon took place on the hotel’s second floor where business luncheons normally do. The banquet room was filled with people I had never seen before.

I took my seat next to Willis Jones and looked around the room. The tables were arranged in a U shape. I noticed then that many pastors had not shown up; that was predictable. Both saved and unsaved pastors resent and fear laymen’s efforts to convert them. I don’t think that conversion was their motivation for inviting me to the Northern; it didn’t matter if it were. I was there because the lay leader had asked me to come.

As we were finishing our dessert a young, pleasant-looking man stood up. I learned he was the Presbyterian minister we had been invited to meet that day. As he spoke it became evident he wasn’t there to preach or to talk about his local congregation; he was there to report on a weekly Bible study in Bismarck that was, in essence, a prayer and support group for Governor Bill Guy. The underlying message, though, was that Christ is alive in Bismarck.

Jesus in Bismarck, North Dakota? I thought, How could that be? I thought Jesus was a prophet who lived in ancient Israel. He was a good, selfless man, and to be a Christian was to copy His lifestyle. I believed Jesus was divine, but only with the same spark of deity which resides in us all. I had called Him Emmanuel— “God with us.” By that, I meant that God had represented Himself to us through Him. But I wouldn’t say He was God, because I didn’t believe it.

In my mind I quickly rummaged through my long-held theology. I had gone to seminary with the notion that by serving in ministry I would do something good for my fellow man. But in seminary I concluded that Jesus was not God and that God wasn’t God either. Instead I believed that the story of Jesus was a useful myth and that the God-concept was a useful principle. On these I tried to build a religion of ethics which would help mankind in its struggle to find significance in this hostile world.

However, I had already begun to notice problems with this kind of faith. First, it made little difference in my own life or in the life of anyone else whether we believed it or not. Second, it was hard to preach; few people understood what I was talking about, and those that did often left the faith altogether. (I was basically saying, “Be good and save yourself.”)

This speaker was saying that Jesus Christ is alive and that I could have a personal relationship with God through Him. He was saying our righteousness is not dependent on anything we do but on what Jesus has already done. The secret is not achieving, but believing.

I guess these ideas weren’t totally new to me, but suddenly they made sense. I recognized if Jesus is alive, as this man claimed, then obviously Jesus is God.

I didn’t have a relationship with Jesus, and I was failing in my efforts to be like Him. How could I be sure I was saved?

So I said in my heart, “I do believe, that Jesus is alive and is God, and I accept Him.” It was a quiet, unemotional resolve, but by the time the meeting had ended my enthusiasm was uncontainable.

I returned to my church office and immediately called my wife to tell her the news. We both cried. Already a born-again believer, she had waited patiently for years for me to understand my own spiritual anemia.

An hour later, there was a knock on my office door. It was Louie Kramp (the stranger on the stairway), Louie Sheldon (the luncheon speaker) and Fred Heyn (now a member of my church). They were there for a “follow-up” visit, to begin discipling me. We had a marvelous time; my heart was light as I spoke with them about Jesus. Louie Kramp told me then that my Jesus-is-God proclamation had taken him by surprise. He told me, “I thought, He’s a preacher and he didn’t know that?” We laughed together thinking about the incongruity of the moment.

In talking with these men I began to understand the Billings laypeople’s enthusiasm. Two years earlier Dick Halverson, who later became U.S. Senate chaplain, had brought a group of laypersons from around the country to Billings to meet with the city’s leaders. These men and women, respected in their fields, had flown into town at their own expense to witness to their faith in Jesus Christ.

As a result of this leadership week in 1960, hundreds of the city’s business, professional, academic and labor leaders made public professions of their faith in Jesus Christ.

Another phenomenal thing happened as a result of that weekend. Scores of small groups of laypeople began meeting throughout the city for Bible study and prayer. Some met for breakfast. Some met for lunch. Some met in the evenings. To this day, 28 years later, you can still find at least one Prayer Breakfast group meeting in almost every restaurant in the city, every day of the week.

The well-known National Prayer Breakfast, which takes place each year at the beginning of the congressional session, is only the tip of the iceberg. It is the visible part of a great movement of God among lay people of all faiths, walks of life and nations, drawn together by a common faith in Jesus Christ. Their objectives are to minister to and with the poor, to train up a new generation of leaders from among the young and to help people in leadership achieve maximum effectiveness for Christ in the exercise of their responsibilities.

That June day I had, by chance, been touched by a great laymen’s movement. Realizing Jesus is God changed my life, and now, nearly 27 years later, I say it with the same untainted enthusiasm I had on the steps of the Northern Hotel.

But the story doesn’t end there.

At my wife’s request, we invited three or four youth from our church to dinner with Louie Sheldon that same night. After dinner I asked Louie, “Tell them what you told me today. Tell them about Jesus.” He did. The young people listened politely.

After Louie left, Sherri, a leader in the youth group, told me, “I’ve attended this church all my life, and I have never heard anything like that. It has to be a bunch of baloney.

“My wife and I continued our work with the teens, motivated by our shared zeal for Jesus. One year later Sherri received Christ; she was the first in the group.

Then the enthusiasm for Jesus snowballed, and each of the teens gave his or her life to Christ. The group grew from 15 to 100 members. Some of their parents started attending church. No one could deny that the gospel being preached was attracting a large following.

Twenty-one years ago I moved my family to Washington, D.C., thinking I would leave the pastorate to work fulltime in the Prayer Breakfast Movement. But Jesus won’t let me leave the pulpit. In our 19 years at Mount Oak United Methodist Church we’ve seen workers in the Justice Department, the Pentagon, the Department of Labor, the Postal Service, businessmen and farmers come to know Christ.

As a senior pastor won to Jesus by laypeople, I take pains to wipe out the distinctions between laity and clergy. At least once a month during our worship service a layperson gives his or her testimony. We also offer a 10-week discipleship program to our laypersons.

The other day a visitor commented to me, “We came for several weeks before we could figure out who the pastor is.” That is a great compliment to us all.

George Anderson is pastor of Mount Oak UMC in Mitchellville, Maryland, and a member of the Good News Board of Directors.