by Steve | May 1, 1982 | Archive - 1982
Condensed from the 1981 Convo Address in Grove City, Pennsylvania
Archive: Wesley and Evangelism
by Robert E. Coleman, Professor of Evangelism Asbury Theological Seminary
Had you been in London on a September Sunday afternoon in 1739, and sought to find the place of greatest excitement, you might have gone to Moorfields and joined the throng milling about on Kinngington Common. Most of the people, by their poor dress and crude manners, would be recognized as of the common sort. Not a few of them would appear disinterested, even riotous, on the fringe of the crowd. But as you slowly worked your way through the uncultured multitude, into the inner circle, you would notice the attention of onlookers change. Idle chatter gradually gave way to respectful silence. Tears could be seen coursing down the grimy faces of stalwart men and resolute women, while they listened intently to an unstrained voice coming from the center of the gathering.
Pushing forward a bit more, and standing on tiptoe to get a better view, you would have seen a man wearing the clerical garb of an Anglican priest. It might have taken you a moment to determine that this was the speaker, for he stood scarcely five feet four inches tall. Long dark silken hair fell upon his shoulders. His eyes flashed with conviction as he lifted his arm, and in clear, resonate tones, repeated: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved!”[1]
Whether you knew it or not, you would have been in the presence of John Wesley, the most influential leader of spiritual awakening of the eighteenth century. Forces for re-renewal set in motion through his life and work still reverberate around the world.
From whatever vantage point his ministry may be viewed, at its center- giving direction and urgency to the whole-was evangelism, the good news of Jesus Christ bursting from a heart of love. Though the dimensions are many and varied, I would like to highlight seven characteristics of Wesley’s evangelistic passion, then make some application of the principles to our situation toda
I. To Wesley, evangelism issued spontaneously out of a personal knowledge of salvation. This may be seen in his own search for personal faith, which after a long and sometimes agonizing quest, climaxed at the Aldersgate meeting on May 24, 1738. A layman was in charge, and for the lesson that evening, he read from Luther’s preface to the Book of Romans. As the young clergyman listened, about a quarter before nine, something happened. It was explained this way:
While he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.[2]
Note what instinctively followed. Wesley said: “I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more special manner despitefully used me and persecuted me.”[3] What began as an experience of salvation now found immediate expression in a constraint to pray for others, an impulse which erupted in personal witness.
Having testified to those present, John Wesley, with some friends, went to tell the good news to his brother Charles, who lay sick in a house nearby. Rushing into his room, John exclaimed: “I believe!” Then, typifying their unbounded joy, they joined in singing a hymn which Charles had composed following his own conversion the day before:
“Where shall my wondering soul begin?
How shall I all to heaven aspire?
A slave redeemed from death and sin,
A brand plucked from eternal fire.
How shall I equal triumphs raise
Or sing my great redeemer’s praise?”[4]
Wesley’s faith was lifted out of the realm of theory and established in personal reality.
From such heartfelt assurances of salvation, Methodism was born. Whatever the promise of redeeming grace, it could be realized by faith, and that without delay.
So must evangelism. be sustained today. The first requirement of real evangelism is an authentic, up-to-date, Spirit-endued experience with the crucified and risen Christ. Then the Gospel must become in us like a living spring of water if it is to flow forth to thirsty souls.
II. Wesley’s message always moved within the context of Biblical truth. The Scriptures had become central in Wesley’s thinking even before his conversion. In fact, they were instrumental in bringing him to know salvation. While at Oxford, with others in the Holy Club, he had resolved to take the Bible as “their whole and sole rule,” it being “their one desire and design to be downright Bible-Christians.”[5] Thereafter, this determination permeated his whole ministry, as is evident from the constant appeal to Scripture in his writing and preaching. “Yea, I am a Bible bigot,” he asserted. “I follow it in all things, both great and small.”[6]
His practice was the reflection of a conviction that the Bible was fully inspired by God. The Bible for him was “infallibly true.”[7] “If there be one falsehood in that book,” he wrote, “it did not come from the God of truth.”[8] He gave no credence to men who stood in judgment upon the oracles of God.
Out of this confidence came his commitment to the doctrines of historic evangelical Christianity. Though he did not draw up a lengthy creedal statement, like the more traditional churches, he did take from his Anglican heritage a simple confession of faith in his Articles of Religion. These, with Wesley’s 44 Standard Sermons, and Explanatory Notes on the New Testament, constituted the Methodist “standards” of doctrine.
To contend, as does the new doctrinal statement of the United Methodist Church, that Methodism has no “confessional principle” is a distortion of history.[9] It is an attempt to justify a prevailing liberal theological climate in the church by imposing upon Wesley a concept of “pluralism,” citing as support his oft-quoted dictum: “As to all opinions which do not strike at the root of Christianity, we think and let think.”[10]
What is ignored is that Wesley’s conciliatory principle applied only to peripheral matters—like modes of baptism or ecclesiastical forms of government—and was never intended to excuse deviation from basic Biblical revelation. This deposit of non-negotiable truth included such foundational doctrines as the virgin birth of Christ; His vicarious blood atonement; the bodily resurrection; His ascension, reign, and triumphant return; original sin; heaven and hell.
To be sure, the catholic spirit of Wesley cut across all sectarianism and bigotry. But there could be no toleration of heresy.
From this kind of theological stamina flowed Methodist evangelism. It is sheer folly to imagine that the Church today can produce the fruits of the Gospel without similar doctrinal integrity. There can be no genuine witness, nor growth in spiritual experience, if we do not believe the Biblical message.
III. Wesley‘s evangelism brings into focus the limitless scope of the Gospel invitation, with the consequential mandate to tell the story to every human being. When it was said that the Son of man came into the world to save sinners, Wesley understood this to mean that in Christ’s redemptive mission there were no exceptions.
God loved the world, and to that end, finally Jesus died on Calvary. The work was complete. Nothing more needed to be done to provide salvation from all sin for all men.
Here he differed from those of the reformed tradition, who, in effect, limited the scope of redemption only to the elect. Wesley did not question the absolute sovereignty of God, nor the inability of people to save themselves; but he believed that by God’s prevenient grace, every person could heed the Gospel call. This was a birthright of the human race. Thus he sang:
“O that the world might taste and see
The riches of His grace!
The arms of love that compass me
Would all mankind embrace.”
Driven by this desire, Wesley could not ignore the multitudes yet in darkness. He was especially mindful of those others passed by—the poor, the sick, the illiterate, the outcasts of society—those downtrodden, lonely hearts who felt unwanted and unloved by most churchmen of his day.
When the Bishop of Bristol told Wesley that he had no business in his parish, and ordered him to go hence, the young evangelist refused. For as he explained:
A dispensation of the gospel is committed to me, and woe is me if I preach not the Gospel wherever I am in the habitable world. Your lordship knows, being ordained a priest, by the commission I then received, I am a priest of the church universal.[11]
The admonition of Wesley was considered so important that it was printed in the early Disciplines of the Church, with the following comment:
Observe; It is not your business to preach so many times, and to take care of this or that society; but to save as many souls as you can; to bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance, and with all your power to build them up in that holiness without which they cannot see the Lord.[12]
This is the spirit which still must constrain evangelism. Our commission is to go to all mankind, lost and the least—to go to the ends of the earth, crossing every artificial barrier, and “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).
IV. Wesley found practical ways to reach the lost. His vision for the masses of humanity\was implemented in a relevant methodology. To use the contemporary jargon, his methods were contextualized, that is, adapted to the particular culture and needs of the time.
Take Wesley’s manner of field preaching, as an example. Certainly if he had chosen his own taste in methods, he would never have become an open-air evangelist. Yet he entered upon this new approach because it was seen to be effective in bringing the Gospel to the unchurched multitudes. Later, he reflected:
What marvel the devil does not love field preaching! Neither do I; I love a commodious room, a soft cushion, a handsome pulpit. But where is my zeal, if I do not trample all these underfoot in order to save one more soul.[13]
So following the example of Mr. Whitfield, on April 1, 1739, he laid aside his temperamental reservations and obeyed the controlling mandate to reach the lost. He wrote in his Journal:
At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about 3000 people.[14]
In the next 50 years evangelism was to be his occupation, and field preaching his preeminent style. In the out-of-doors in open fields, on street corners, at factory gates—Wesley met the people in congregations larger than church buildings could contain. His biographer, L. Tyerman, has computed that of the approximately 500 sermons preached during a nine-month period in 1739, only eight were delivered in churches.[15]
Though often ridiculed and maligned because of his preaching policy, Wesley never quit.[16] What difference did it make that the sophisticated clergymen of his day scorned him? God was using his methods to awaken lost souls to their privileges of grace, and that was all that mattered.
Because this approach worked, Wesley developed the itinerant system of moving preachers from place to place. It seemed at the time, considering resources available, the most expeditious system of ministering to the whole population. By this constraint also, he started preaching at 5 o’clock in the morning, because he found that it was the best time to catch workers before they went into the mines or factories. The use of lay preachers was justified in the same way, as was the publishing and distribution of tracts.
The organizational structures of class meetings, local societies, and annual conferences were similarly devised. They were simply means of accomplishing the task at hand. Commenting on church practices, in a letter to a friend, Wesley asked:
What is the end of all ecclesiastied order? Is it not to bring souls from the power of Satan to God, and to build them up in His fear and love? Order, then, is so far valuable as it answers these ends; and if it answers them not, it is nothing worth.[17]
If we were driven by this criterion today, what effect would it have upon our church policies? Would it not, at the very least, bring us to examine our programs in the light of their fruitfulness? Activities which are seen to be unproductive would be revised, or dropped altogether. And other programs which seem more promising would be tried.
For us now in the twentieth century, of course, field preaching or the itinerant system, may not be the best recourse. Because these methods were well-suited to Wesley’s generation does not necessarily mean that they are conducive to ours. The question is: Are we determined to get the job done, whatever it takes? When we are, I believe that we will discover ways to do it.
V. Wesley’s Methodists aspired to a disciplined sainthood. Evangelism for Wesley did not end when people made professions of faith. Conversion was only the first step in an ongoing life of discipleship. Hence, the strong emphasis on growing in the likeness of Christ.
Anyone “desiring to flee from the wrath to come, and to save his soul” could become a Methodist. But this desire, as Wesley noted, “must be evidenced by three marks: avoiding all known sin; doing good after his power; and, attending all the ordinances of God.”[18]
This involved participating in a small class meeting each week, where the Methodist discipline was enforced. A class leader was expected to inquire of all persons how their souls prospered, and “to advise, reprove, comfort, or exhort,” as the occasion required.[19] In this manner no Methodist was ever left without regular oversight.
Smaller groups of people met each week in bands. These meetings were for the purpose of recounting Christian experiences, and plainly confessing faults. The leader of each band was required to describe “his own state first, and then to ask the rest, in order, as many and as searching questions as may be, concerning their state, sins, and temptations.”[20] One can imagine the catharsis this regular exercise had upon the people.
Methodists were expected to live holy lives. Perfection of love was always held before them as the standard-a love that found expression toward God in purity of devotion and toward man in selfless service. Out of such holiness flowed their personal witness and social compassion.
Herein was the attraction of their evangelism. It was beautiful in practical holiness. No wonder Wesley exhorted his preachers to follow his example in continually speaking on Christian perfection. Where holiness “is little insisted • on,” he observed, “there is little increase, either in the number or the grace of the hearers.”[21]
It is still true today. Evangelism without holiness, both in the witness and the fruit desired, becomes a contradiction. We must recover, not only the Wesleyan standard of Christian character, but also the disciplined manner by which that life is encouraged. Merely recruiting church members is not enough; new converts must be nourished in a life-style of holiness—a Christlikeness that inevitably radiates love to a lost world.
VI. To Wesley, evangelism meant the mobilization of the whole church for m Wesley’s holistic approach did more than meet the felt needs of people; he involved them in the on-going work. Early Methodism took seriously the priesthood of all believers.
This was immediately evident in the atmosphere created within the class and band meetings. In these little gatherings of kindred spirits, everyone was enabled to participate in the ministry of counseling, encouragement, and prayer. What a natural way to stimulate mutual expression of love, an emphasis inherent in their holiness ethic. From the very beginning of incorporation in the body, they were learning to function as priests by ministering to each other.
Within this context, persons with special gifts would be recognized, and some, appropriately endowed, made class and band leaders. Those with different gifts might be appointed stewards, or assigned some other form of service. Significantly the pastoral functions of ministry, including visiting the sick, comforting the bereaved, and looking after the destitute, were carried on largely by the local people themselves.
Even the preachers appointed by Wesley to the circuits were usually laymen, without any professional training for ministry. In fact, for the most part they had little or no formal education. They were people who came up from the ranks—God-fearing men and women who sensed the call of God for this kind of service.
The use of lay preachers provoked criticism by the more educated clergy of other communions, of course. Augustus Toplady, for example, accused Wesley of “prostituting the ministerial function to the lowest and most illiterate mechanics, persons of almost any class.” Further reflecting his disdain, as well as the extent of Methodist lay involvement, Toplady advised:
Let his [Wesley] cobblers keep to their stalls. Let his tinkers mind their vessels. Let his barbers confine themselves to their blocks and basons. Let his bakers stand to their kneading-troughs. Let his blacksmiths blow more suitable coals than those of controversy.[22]
This is our Methodist heritage. We have come from the workshops of common laborers, not theological seminaries. Wesley did not belittle ordination, 1nor university training. He was himself a college man, probably one of the most thoroughly educated clergymen of his day. But he knew that any evangelistic movement that reaches the masses must bring its own people into the harvest.
We, too, must learn to multiply ourselves by equipping others for the work of the ministry. Most Methodists today have little personal sense of responsibility for reaching the world. We know the theory of every member involvement, but by our example, one would get the impression that ministry requires professional training and ecclesiastical sanction. It is imperative that we rediscover the daily work of making disciples through our vocational callings. Whatever our gifts, there is a ministry for all, not only in testifying to the grace of God, but in helping new Christians assume their role in the great commission.
VII. Wesley’s evangelism was the overflow of true revival—coming alive to the power of God. This reality, on a personal level, gave direction to the experience of salvation, and preserved Wesley’s Biblical theology from the complacency of dead orthodoxy.
The refining fire of Pentecost inflamed Methodists with love for a lost world, and constrained them, by any means at hand, to herald the Gospel to every creature. By the same mighty inworking of the energizing Spirit, they were brought under godly discipline, and molded into an army of laborers.
Here was the genius of Methodism. It was not another religious institution, but a movement of renewal, joining together earnest souls seeking first the kingdom. To the question in the Larger Minutes, “What may we measurably believe to be God’s design in raising up the preachers called Methodists?,” Wesley answered: “Not to form any new sect; but to reform the nation, particularly the church; and to spread Scriptural holiness over the land .”[23]
One could be a Methodist without leaving one’s own communion, or even becoming a member of a Methodist society. Their purpose was to “spread life among all denominations,” wrote Wesley in 1790, though he added prophetically: “Which they will do till they form a separate sect.”[24]
For more than 40 years Methodism existed as an ecumenical body in the midst and alongside established churches. Certainly the parachurch nature of the original societies was seen as no impediment to their spiritual effectiveness. Indeed, “it could be argued,” according to A. Skevington Wood, a foremost Methodist historian, that ‘Wesley’s societies were most useful when they remained independent of ecclesiastical control, whether Anglican or eventually Methodist.”[25]
Ponder the implications of this for our day. If the power of Methodism is somehow diminished when institutionalized, why should we feel so obliged to perpetuate the ecclesiastical structures? Would we not more nearly represent the vision of Wesley by concentrating our energy upon developing spiritual resources rather than bureaucratic organizations?
By the same criteria, why should we limit our fellowship to those within the Methodist constituency? In the true Wesleyan catholic spirit, do we not have affinity with people from every denominational background who are in the flow of revival, be they Baptist, Pentecostal, or Roman Catholic? The same applies to relationships with many contemporary interdenominational fellowships. Inde ed, are not our ties in the Spirit much closer to these persons of kindred heart and aspiration than any ecclesiastical loyalty to a particular denomination? Then let us cultivate our oneness with the movement of God’s Spirit in our time.
Methodism at its heart is a revival movement, and the spirit of Wesley is more alive today than ever before.
Do you not see it? You will notice its appeal in the response of multitudes to the Gospel invitation at a Billy Graham Crusade; you will sense its intensity in a little neighborhood home Bible study; you will feel its excitement in a Southern Baptist evangelism conference; you will catch its earnestness in a Salvation Army street meeting; you will find its commitment in a Campus Crusade action group; you will realize its explosive force in the mushrooming Sunday school of a growing independent church; you will know its presence in the joy of a Catholic charismatic renewal celebration; you will thrill with its vision in the hearts of young people going to the mission fields of the world; and in a thousand other forms of Spirit-filled witness you will recognize the dynamic of revival in our time. Here is the real Wesleyan movement, the spirit of true Methodism, by whatever name it is called.
Here I find my identity—and my fellowship. Here, too, I can rejoice, confident that the ingathering of the Church of Jesus Christ will increase with the years, until that day the work is done, the harvest finished, and the kingdom comes to fruition in the eternal praise of God.
[1] Adopted from a description of this event by Halford E. Luccock and Paul Hutchinson, The Story of Methodism (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1926), pp. 13-18.
[2] John Wesley, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., ed. by Nehemiah Curnock, I (London: Robert Culley, 1909) , pp. 475, 476. The description of this experience, as well as the struggles leading up to it, indicate that it was for Wesley an evangelical conversion. Though there were evidences of spiritual awakening much earlier, as far back as 1725, it was not until Aldersgate that a complete turning point in his life becomes obvious.
[3] John Wesley, Journal, I, op. cit., p. 476.
[4] This is the hymn generally believed to have been sung on this occasion, though it is not named by either John or Charles. Another possibility, sometimes proposed, is Wesley’s “And Can It Be.”
[5] John Wesley, A Short History of Methodism, The Works of John Wesley, ed. by T. Jackson VIII (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1872), p. 348.
[6] John Wesley, Journal, V, op. cit., p. 169.
[7] John Wesley, “The Means of Grace,” Wesley s Standard Sermons, ed. by E. Sugden, I (London: Epworth, 1968), pp. 249, 250.
[8] John Wesley, Journal, VI, op. cit., p. 117.
[9] A document drawn up by a Theological Study Commission on Doctrine and adopted by the General Conference in 1972, now printed as “Doctrine and Doctrinal Statements and the General Rules,” The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church, 1980 (Nashville: United Methodist Publishing House, 1980), p. 41.
[10] Ibid, p. 40. My response to this statement may be seen in “The New Doctrinal Directives of Methodism,” an unpublished paper issued in 1972, available from Good News, 308 E. Main St., Wilmore, KY 40390. 504 each, including postage.
[11] John Wesley, Journal, 11, op. cit., p. 257.
[12] John Wesley, Minutes of Several Conversations, Works, V 111, op. cit., p. 310.
[13] John Wesley, Journal, IV, op. cit., p. 325.
[14] John Wesley, Journal, II, op. cit., p. 156.
[15] L. Tyerman, The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, I (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1870-71), p. 234.
[16] A. Skevington Wood, The Burning Heart (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1978), pp. 94–97. This study, incidentally, is the best all-round treatment of Wesley’s evangelistic ministry that I have seen.
[17] John Wesley, The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, ed. by John Telford (London: Epworth, 1931), 11, p. 77.
[18] John Wesley, “On God’s Vineyard,” Works, VII, op. cit., p. 209, cf. “General Rules,” Works, VIII, op. cit., pp. 270, 271.
[19] John Wesley, A Plain Account of the People Called Methodist, Works, VIII, op. cit., p. 253.
[20] John Wesley, Rules of the Band Societies, Works, VIII, op. cit., p. 272.
[21] John Wesley, Letters, IV, op. cit., p. 149.
[22] Quoted by Howard A. Snyder, The Radical Wesley (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 1980), p. 64.
[23] John Wesley, Minutes of Several Conversations, Works, VIII, op. cit., p. 299.
[24] John Wesley, Letters, VIII, op. cit., p. 211.
[25] A. Skevington Wood, op. cit., p. 193.
by Steve | Mar 21, 1982 | Archive - 1982
Methodist Heritage: Tindley Temple United Methodist Church
By William F. McDermott
Coronet magazine, June 1946
Good News
March/April 1982
All Philadelphia went into mourning on July 31, 1933. Government officials and Chinese laundrymen, priests and scrubwomen, corporation presidents and street cleaners, Jews, Catholics and Protestants, blacks and whites, packed 5,000 strong into a church seating 3,200 people, to listen to five hours of inspirational tribute to an aged black man.
Radio stations broadcast the services, downtown streets were roped off to hold back the crowds, hundreds of telegrams of condolence poured in from all over the nation. For several hours previously a continuous stream of mourners had filed by the bier. All this was in heartfelt homage to an ex-slave and hod-carrier.
He was Charles A. Tindley, who at 17 could neither read nor write yet ultimately learned Greek and Hebrew. By day he toiled up and down ladders carrying back-breaking loads of brick, at night he served as janitor of a little mission church. Finally he became pastor of that church, gradually building it into not only one of the largest Methodist congregations in the world with 7,000 members, but also into a city-wide relief center for the poor. Some called him Philadelphia’s foremost citizen, but another title fitted best: a Lincoln in Ebony.
Tindley, 74 at his death, stood six feet two and weighed 240 pounds with a figure as straight as an arrow and a lionesque head. His spirit was one of humility and compassion, particularly for the underdog of any race, and he labored in simple ways that suggested the martyred President. Wherever he went he drew great crowds, often more whites than blacks gathering to hear him. When a theologian asked one of Tindley’s twelve children, “How did your father win such a great success?” the youth answered, “On his knees.”
At the peak of his career during the early 1930s, Dr. Tindley preached to three or four thousand people every Sunday. His great church on Broad Street began filling at 7 a.m. with people eager to attend 10 o’clock worship. During the intervening hours they sang old spirituals, modern hymns, gave testimonies, laughed and cried and prayed. Hundreds were regularly turned away. By 11:20, when the second service started, the sanctuary was jammed. At night there was a similar throng.
Whenever the black clergyman could be lured from his congregation, people of all faiths traveled to hear him. Crowds almost fought to get within earshot. His sermons on ”Trees,” “A Forget-Me-Not,” “Religion in a Blade of Grass,” were masterpieces. He was a landscape artist in words, making nature’s beauty float before his congregation’s eyes .
Always the peak of Tindley’s services was the “altar call,” when penitents were summoned to kneel and seek forgiveness for their sins. One time a young white man, his eyes bleary from drinking, heard Dr. Tindley’s plea and joined him at the altar. Together, before the vast crowd, the two knelt in prayer. Then, as the congregation waited, the pastor and the penitent whispered to each other
“Friends,” Dr. Tindley called to his people, his arm linked through that of the stranger, “I want you to know this young man who has just given his heart to God. He is the grandson of the Maryland planter who once owned me as a slave!”
Tindley was born in a cabin on Maryland’s eastern shore in 1851. A year after his mother’s death, when he was only five, he was separated from his father and sold to a slaveholder in another town. Held in bondage, he was not even allowed to look at a book or attend church. Furtively he sought scraps of printed matter: a torn page of a book in the wood box, a newspaper page along the roadside. He stuffed these inside his ragged shirt, then gathered pine knots and took them to his shanty. There, after the other slaves had gone to sleep, by dim and flickering light the boy tried to make out the mysterious letters.
Night after night he struggled to find the key. Even when he attained freedom after the Civil War, he was still illiterate. But by the time he was 17, he could spell and write the word “cat.”
The only religion Charlie had in those days was what he felt inside, but the longing to attend church grew until he determined to worship somewhere. He would walk to the Chesapeake Bay on Saturday mornings and, with ashes for soap, wash his only shirt and hang it on a limb to dry. Carefully he kept it clean to wear to church next morning.
For long hours he worked in the fields by day, walking 14 miles at night to learn the three Rs. When finally he mastered them he resolved to go to Philadelphia and study further. He became a hod-carrier, for three years toting brick and spending his nights either as a church janitor or school attendant. Tindley determined to enter the ministry and help his people, so he not only attended school but also took correspondence courses. Every spare dollar went into books ….
Especially he loved Greek and Hebrew. He learned Greek by correspondence with a theological school in Boston; Hebrew he studied under a rabbi in Philadelphia. Courses in science and literature were taken privately. Charlie was still church janitor when he took examinations for the ministry. Some of his more formally educated brethren eyed him with amusement. One bumptious young theologian asked: “How do you expect to pass your examination? The other candidates and I have diplomas. What do you hold?”
“Nothing but a broom,” replied Tindley. In the examination he ranked second highest …. In 1902, Tindley was called to Bainbridge Street Methodist Church in Philadelphia, where once he had been a janitor. It was only a storefront mission, barely kept alive by a small group of the faithful. Other pastors consoled Tindley on the “certain failure” that faced him. But his spark of faith touched off a fire of fervor in the congregation. Soon 75 were attending, then a hundred, and finally the mission overflowed. A real church seating 600 was erected. A couple of years later a gallery was added.
About 1907, the old sanctuary of a white congregation, seating 1,500 people, was acquired for $69,000. Soon this building was jammed. Even Tuesday night prayer meetings drew more than a thousand. The movement for a still larger church got under way. Five buildings next door were bought and razed. A huge edifice costing $350,000 was paid for through the tithes of the members, without bazaars or carnivals. Dedication was set for Sunday, December 7, 1924, but at midnight Mrs. Tindley died.
Laboring on despite his grief, and caring for his large brood of children, Tindley built up the congregation to 7,000, plus a Sunday school of more than 2,000. The church, seating 3,200, was filled three times each Sunday and often during the week. Every New Year’s Eve a revival was begun, usually lasling throughout January.
For more than 30 years, the black preacher labored in that one parish, which became famous not only for its services but for its charity. Every winter Dr. Tindley maintained a breadline, often with 500 ragged men and women in it. Hot soup and coffee were dished out freely. If people needed clothing, the pastor provided it. Jobs were also found for the unemployed.
One night the mayor of Philadelphia watched the breadline file by. “I’ve often heard about this relief work,” he told Tindley, “but I never dreamed it was anything like this. I want to help a little.” He pulled out his checkbook and wrote a check for $3,000.
“There’s no politics attached to that,” said the mayor, grinning. “I don’t expect even one vote.” When Tindley’s son remarked that his father won his success on his knees, he spoke literally. Tindley was not only given to prayer but also to self-discipline. Always he arose at 4 a.m. and went to his study for intercession. Sometimes his children awoke at the sound of the key being turned in the study door. Other times they would stir in their sleep as their father sang alone his hymn of devotion. Often he sang his own compositions, for during his lifetime he wrote many songs ….
People of different nationalities and races not only attended Tindley’s services but served as officers of the congregation. Both blacks and whites were represented in the leadership, along with Italians, Jews, Germans, Norwegians, Mexicans, and Danes ….
Many offers and honors came to Tindley, including honorary degrees, but he preferred the humble task of shepherding his flock. More than once his name was submitted to the Methodist General Conference for election as bishop, but he always withdrew it. He was 74, working hard as ever, when one day in July, 1933, he had a premonition that his work was done. He went home, put his affairs in shape, then journeyed to the hospital where he spent a week in quiet talks with his children. Then the father turned weakly on his side and, pointing to the window, said, “I can see my mansion now. It’s as large as the state of Pennsylvania.” He died the next day.
When Tindley’s new church was built in 1924, the name was changed, in spite of the pastor’s protests, to the Tindley Temple Methodist Church. It stands today on Broad Street in Philadelphia, a memorial to the one-time slave and hod-carrier, the Lincoln in Ebony who, by his love of God and devotion to humanity, won the heart of the City of Brotherly Love.
This article first appeared in Coronet magazine, June 1946. Reprinted by permission. Coronet published 1936-1971.
Tindley Temple Today
By Diane Knippers
The “faith of our fathers,” like that of Charles Tindley, doesn’t mean a thing unless it becomes the faith of this generation. So we wondered what the Tindley Temple UM Church was like today. It is still the imposing edifice along a wide thoroughfare in downtown Philadelphia. But what is going on today inside the historic building?
To find out, I called Claude Edmonds, the pastor of Tindley Temple since October 1980. Tindley Temple certainly doesn’t have the size and impact it once did (the present membership stands at 1, 100 with average attendance of about 400). But I did learn that there are significant signs of spiritual vitality in this inner city church.
First, I was curious about what it is like to minister in a church with the kind of history and tradition Tindley Temple has. So I asked Dr. Edmonds if the past is a burden – or if the heritage is a helpful factor.
“I was born and raised in Tindley Temple, and was a baby when Charles Tindley died,” he responded. “So the tradition of the church is not new to me. We are proud of our spiritual roots and heritage. But we can’t live in the past.”
When I asked about his dreams for the future of Tindley Temple, Dr. Edmonds emphasized the centrality of spiritual Edmonds renewal: “We want to see the church, as a community, have a hunger and thirst after righteousness. This must be the basis of all our outreach to the community and society. Right now we are emphasizing our prayer meeting and the things of the Spirit. A strong prayer meeting will spill over into the Sunday worship service and other ministries. If the inner life is growing, that will attract other people to come to Christ. That is basic to a growing community.”
Dr. Edmonds shared the exciting news that Charles Tindley is being recognized by the Smithsonian Institution in May 1982 for his contribution to American life. Tindley wrote some 60 hymns, and many are in our UM hymnal. Dr. Edmonds concluded, “There is no future for a congregation such as ours unless we develop a strong spiritual inner life.”
– Diane Knippers
by Steve | Mar 20, 1982 | Archive - 1982
The Bodily Resurrection
By Clark Pinnock
March/April 1982
Each of the four Gospels announces that the tomb in which the crucified Jesus had been buried on Friday afternoon was empty on Easter morning. Their testimony is supported by the primitive preaching recorded in Acts: “his flesh did not see corruption” (2:31), and echoed by the apostle Paul who, in agreement with the Jerusalem apostles, wrote that “Jesus died, was buried, and rose again on the third day” (I Cor. 15:3-4, 11). By an action of God the Father, the tomb wherein Jesus had been placed was emptied of its contents, and Jesus, body and soul, was raised to newness of life, his earthly body having been transformed onto the eschatological plane. Through the clarity of their testimony and the spiritual power of this truth upon Christians from then until now, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ has been the historic conviction of the church and the normative meaning of the phrase in the Apostles’ Creed, ” … on the third day he rose again from the dead.”
Why did God raise Christ bodily? But why, apart from the New Testament authoritative claim and its intrinsic plausibility, is it important to hold the resurrection as an event that affected Jesus’ earthly body? Granted, the apostles believed in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and those who claim to be established upon the foundation of their teachings should be expected to believe it too. But what truths are there contained in this belief that move the discussion ahead to the area of its significance for us today? Why did God raise Christ bodily? There are at least three interrelated reasons.
1. The first is evidential in nature. The resurrection of Jesus represents the verdict of the Father upon the obedience of the Son. In that public and dramatic event God pronounced by means of a deed that transcends the alphabet of human power his approval and acceptance of Jesus’ suffering and death on behalf of the human race. It sealed and confirmed the pre-Easter claims and activity of Jesus in which our Lord stood in God’s place and confronted mankind with his claim about the kingdom of God. Though seized and put to shameful death by wicked men, Jesus was snatched from corruption and powerfully declared to be the exalted Son of God (Rom. 1 :4). Nothing less than the bodily resurrection of Jesus would have sufficed to convince his disciples of the truth of his vindication in the face of opposition and his victory over the powers of death. And according to the unanimous witness of the New Testament writers it was the fact of the bodily resurrection that convinced them. Had any of them believed that the resurrection was poetry and not fact, as Howse suggests, they would never have left their fishing nets to preach the gospel. There would have been no gospel
2. The second reason is closely connected to the first. The verdict of the Father rested upon Jesus as the Savior of sinners. It represented his declaration and assurance that the redemptive work of the One in whom we are chosen to be saved has been successfully accomplished and accepted. Jesus’ resurrection was at the same time his justification (I Tim. 3:16) and our justification as well (Rom. 4:25). In his death Jesus was crucified as if he were a wrongdoer – indeed, as a substitute for sinners; and in his resurrection the great exchange is validated by God so that sinners who cling to him in faith rise to the status of acceptance and justification themselves because of His work (Heb. 9:26). Jesus bore our sins in his body on the tree (I Peter 2:24), and having put them all away forever (Heb. 9:26), received glorification in the same body also on our behalf. In the resurrection of Jesus, God raised us up to newness of life with him and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 2:6). If Christ’s body is still under the power of death, he has failed as our representative and there is no atonement for sins. Paul made that connection clear when he said, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” ( I Cor. 15: 17). In short, if Christ has been raised bodily, we stand acquitted if we are related to him through faith. In not letting his chosen and holy one see the corruption of death, God fulfilled the scriptural promises by exalting and lifting up his faithful servant, so that through his vicarious suffering of the will of the Lord for the salvation of sinners might be seen to have become effective.
3. But there is a third reason which helps to explain the basis of the two others. It has to do with the meaning of resurrection in the apocalyptic expectation, which, in contrast to the Greek belief in the immortality of the soul, hopes for the complete redemption of man, body and soul. Salvation in the light of the resurrection involves an enlargement and enhancement rather than a diminution of life. It speaks of the total transformation of the whole person in the new creation that God has promised, wherein this mortal puts on immortality and this corruptible incorruption (I Cor. 15:53; II Cor.5:4). To reduce the resurrection to an immaterial symbol of new life is to rob salvation as the New Testament understands it of the dimension of world transformation, and to push it in the direction of Greek thought. Bodily resurrection is important because it signifies the salvation of creation and creaturely existence, not simply the liberation of man’s spiritual essence. Christ’s resurrection is a promissory event, what Paul calls “first fruits,” which gives mankind concrete proof and substance to the hope entertained by the people of God for total transformation at the end of history. Through Christ, the last Adam, has come the resurrection into life of all who are in Christ (1 Cor. 15:20-23). Although the life will be unimaginably glorious, it will be life in space and time. And although delivered from the bondage of corruption, it will be life in the new heavens and earth wherein dwells righteousness. The real meaning of the denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus is in the end a refusal of the cosmic significance of Christian salvation. It is the refusal to believe that the God who created all things is able to subdue all things and bring about a new world.
The habitual thinking of this present humanistic age conditions us to receive with skepticism the angel’s announcement of the empty tomb. It has affected some so keenly as to lead them to deny the good news and maintain it is not so, and to cling desperately to a dematerialized resurrection concept suspended halfway between belief and unbelief. Let us not allow this world’s thinking to squeeze us into its mold, but let us arise on Easter morning to confess with joyful and believing hearts God’s victory over sin and death through the literal resurrection of the body of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Excerpted from “The Incredible Resurrection: A Mandate for Faith” by Clack H. Pinnock. © 1979, Christianity Today. Used by permission.
Pinnock defends bodily resurrection
Despite the evidence, there persists an effort to dematerialize belief in the resurrection of Jesus. [In 1978] a novel appeared by Charles Templeton entitled Act of God. It tells a story about the discovery of Jesus’ body and the church’s attempt to keep news of this from the general public. More intriguing than the novel itself – its plot centers upon precisely that supposed discovery which the historical evidence assures us did not occur – has been the reaction to that possibility by liberal churchmen. Ernest Howse, for example, a long-time pastor of the Bloor Street United Church in Toronto, explained in a newspaper column that Templeton’s central hypothesis held no cogency at all for him, since the discovery of Jesus’ bones would have no effect whatsoever upon his belief in Jesus’ “resurrection.” People only feel threatened by such a possible discovery, he feels, if they confuse poetry with fact, when they would do better to recognize that whatever happened to the body of Jesus could have no effect upon the spiritual and moral impact of his life, which has been effective across the centuries. Howse believes in the “resurrection” of Jesus, but not in physical sense.
Harvard theologian Gordon Kaufman expresses a similar conviction. While recognizing that earliest Christians themselves believed in the bodily resurrection Jesus who died on the cross, Kaufman finds it impossible to agree with their interpretation (their belief being caused by hallucinatory visions of the risen Christ). Instead, he posits a continuity between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith of a rather different kind. In his opinion, the central claim of the church in proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection was “that the God who had been acting through Jesus’ ministry and especially in his death was still actively at work in the community of believers.” Not the transformation of Jesus’ body, but the continued effectiveness of God’s action, he claims, is the theologically important point they wished to make. Kaufman, to his credit, is not denying that belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus and the conviction about God’s continued activity were closely connected in the minds of those earliest Christians; he feels simply that for him as a modern theologian they are not inextricably connected. In his view, the true meaning of the historical event called “Jesus’ resurrection” concerns not the fate of Jesus’ body, but the ongoing divine work of redeeming mankind. He holds that resurrection faith can be safely dematerialized without doing serious damage to the real significance of that event (Systematic Theology: A Historicist Perspective, pp. 411-34, 467f.).
It is thus common to encounter liberal Christians who, rather than believe the New Testament claim as it stands, regard faith in the risen Christ as independent of the empty tomb, which is taken to be unessential and separable from the article of faith itself. God did not need, it is argued, the relic of Jesus’ earthly body in order to establish continuity between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith; there was no requirement for the tomb to be empty for God to be able to raise Christ to new life.
We must now ask how this position was reached, and what our attitude to it should be. It is surprising to find belief in Jesus’ resurrection interpreted in a manner foreign both to the plain teachings of the New Testament and to the ordinary meaning this word conveys. Why would anybody want to confess the resurrection of Jesus in so misleading and even deceptive away? Several of the reasons usually advanced are so weak as to suggest that real reasons lie deeper.
1. It is common to find reference to conflicts and inconsistencies that are said to exist in the resurrection narratives. At a number of points the details in one of the accounts do not match up precisely with details in the others. Less often mentioned is the fact that the differences involved are relatively slight, and can be harmonized without much strain. Their existence may actually enhance the credibility of the reports by removing any suggestion of collusion between the various witnesses. This is certainly no reason for abandoning what the four Gospels all unequivocally state in perfect agreement on the bodily resurrection.
2. Another reason regularly heard is the claim that the apostle Paul meant something quite different by his use of the term resurrection than the Gospel writers did. Not only does he fail to mention the empty tomb, the argument goes, but he also thinks of resurrected existence in radically different terms from that of flesh and blood (I Cor. 15:50); the raising of Jesus’ could not have been of any interest to him in the light of his theology of resurrection in I Corinthians 15
The point, however, is far from decisive. Why should Paul juxtapose “he was buried” and “he raised,” and the life to which was raised was on a higher plane than the flesh and blood plane which it existed earlier? A bodily resurrection is indeed assumed, too, both in his teaching on baptism in which a body is symbolically buried in water and raised up out of it (Rom. 6:4), and in the promise he gives that our lowly body will changed to be like Christ’s glorious body through the power of ·God (Phil. 3:21). There is no compelling reason to interpret Paul in any way than as giving yet another powerful witness to the reality of bodily resurrection of Christ.
3. Still another reason sometimes iced suggests the possibility the Jewish mind had no other concept available to it for expressing victory over death except resurrection, so Christian faith got conceptualized in this way even though there was no factual basis for it. This objection is simply inaccurate. In the book of Wisdom, survival after death of the just is described in terms of immortality granted by God – a concept not confined to Jews of the Diaspora (Wisdom 3:1-8) Had the early Christians merely wanted to say that Jesus was alive in the spiritual realm after his death they could have said so without dragging in the notion of resurrection, whose sharp meaning would have introduced serious misunderstanding.
Many other weak and ineffective reasons are advanced to sidestep belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, but it is all too apparent that the real reasons are philosophical and theological, not empirical and historical. Let us at the latter.
The true reason why liberal theologians seek to sidestep the New Testament witness to the bodily and physical resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is an unbiblical philosophy of religion at work in their revisionist theologies. It stems from a humanistic view of history, which makes the event of resurrection unacceptable because it is incredible. Such an assumption makes necessary a novel reinterpretation of faith divorced from fact. Bultmann with admirable plainness states what others often seek to conceal: “A historical fact which involves a resurrection from the dead is utterly inconceivable” (Kerygma and Myth, p. 42). Bultmann’s presupposition derives from David Hume and Ernst Troeltsch, and involves a narrow conception of historical reality that excludes from the outset the credibility of the resurrection claim. Pursuing this line of thought, a person is faced with two alternatives: either to turn away from a Christian position, or to revise his understanding of faith so that it can exist unthreatened by the denial of its factual basis. If faith can just be detached from the relativities and naturalistic tone of ordinary history, it can flourish free from any falsification of the type Templeton proposes in what Francis Schaeffer has called its “upper story,” unassailed by any of the acids of historical criticism.
How attractive such a proposal must seem to those who desire to maintain faith but who cannot bring themselves to accept the historical conditions on which the New Testament says faith must rest! It enables them to escape from the skeptical consequences of their own humanistic criticism while holding onto the subjective benefits of faith, simply by divorcing the gospel from its historical foundations. All they must deny is the truth Paul stated: “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain” (I Cor. 15:14). According to this new view, faith and fact are not so precariously joined.
A biblically oriented Christian, however, must ask whose logic is better, Paul’s or Bultmann’s. Quite apart from the question of Paul’s infallibility as an apostle of Christ, is it not plain that the New Testament as a whole supports his argument? None of the biblical witnesses place the saving acts of God in a realm detached from ordinary history; none of them locate faith at the level of subjective meaning indifferent to matters of fact. However attractive for apologetic reasons the new proposal may at first appear, it is surely utterly wrongheaded and the results are ultimately disastrous. There is only history, and the Bible declares that God raised up Christ in that very realm – not in some misty supra-history running parallel to it and never intersecting with it. Evangelical Christians ought reject the positivistic assumptions that take history to be a closed continuum of cause and effect which disallows the freedom of God to act in history for the salvation of mankind and open their minds instead to the glorious possibility that historical reality is the way the Bible describes it. When the gospel was first preached in the Roman Empire, its acceptance involved the repudiation of all manner of spurious notions about the universe that were rampant in the hellenistic world. So today, where the gospel of Christ is preached, the demand is made that positivisitic assumptions about history be put aside and the magnificent truth about God’s powerful intervention in the midst of it be accepted in its place. To the person in this frame of mind the claim about the resurrection of Jesus is a glorious truth, not an awkward embarrassment.
by Steve | Jan 1, 1982 | Archive - 1982
E.A. “Tata” Seamands
Archive: Missionary of the Century
by Jonathan Massey
A showdown was taking place in the dusty, turn-of-the-century streets of “rootin’, tootin’, shootin’ Tucson, Arizona.” Earl Arnett Seamands faced a merciless bully standing right in front of the meat market.
Being an expert with his slingshot, Arnett loaded it with a steel slug and aimed at his enemy’s forehead, 20 feet away. “Divine intervention alone saved that bully from sudden death,” he declares. “In a split second my angel jerked my aim down to his shin. The slug glanced off his shin and the cement sidewalk, went through the plate glass window, and struck the bookkeeper.”
Arnett, self-confessed “roughneck” of his high school class and practicing non-Christian, was saved from being a teen-age murderer. He became, instead, Tucson’s first Protestant foreign missionary, known to all as “Tata” (honored Grandfather), a special tribute given him by his beloved people of lndia.
E.A. Seamands was born in Lexington, Kentucky, on October 5, 1891. His father, John, worked as a railroad conductor. The family moved to Tucson in 1896 where John Seamands went to work as a conductor for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Meanwhile, young Arnett grew up in the wilds surrounding Tucson. He loved athletics, was a first-rate baseball player, and enjoyed long camping expeditions, often walking 80 miles round trip.
This rigorous physical conditioning developed a powerful constitution that has lasted to this day. At 90 years of age, he is a tall, erect, vital, and energetic man who can be seen socializing almost any day around the environs of Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky. While recounting the story of his life, he paces the floor of his study, gesturing to emphasize important facts.
John Seamands was a nominal Southern Methodist. But Jennie, Arnett’s mother, was “a beautiful Christian housewife, a Presbyterian.” She always took her children to Sunday school and church, and never forgot their bedtime prayers. Although she died in 1903, Arnett continued the habit of going to church. His eyes sparkling with merriment at the paradox, he identifies himself as a Presbyterian baby “predestined to become a Methodist missionary!”
But no one could have predicted his destiny while he grew up in Tucson. Arnett admits he was “dangerously hardened by boyhood circumstances.” He recalls, “I didn’t like preachers and I didn’t want to be a Christian, though my mother was a godly woman. I had some idea that Christians were sissies and I was a lively guy, you see. I could pole vault eight feet!”
Fortunately, this “hardening” process was not advanced by common problems faced at schools today. He remembers that there was not a cigarette or cocktail in the entire high school. In fact, the girls had a motto, “The lips that touch wine shall never touch mine.”
The hardening was fueled by continual rejection of God’s grace. He remembers one Sunday morning during his senior year of high school when God spoke to him as he neared church. He was startled by a “still, small voice” within saying, “My son, give me your heart!” However, “this call was soon swamped in forgetfulness by my consuming purpose to be an engineer. I figured it all out: when I get to be old … with one foot slipping into the grave, I’ll join the church and make heaven! Not now.”
Arnett graduated from high school when the population of Tucson was only about 15,000. On May 27, 1910 he and nine others received diplomas—Tucson High School’s first graduating class. He is the only one of those first graduates alive today.
Forsaking the University of Arizona only a few blocks away, Arnett went east to enroll at the College of Engineering, University of Cincinnati, in late summer of 1911. The college had newly inaugurated a co-op technique of education where the students spent two weeks in the classroom, and the next two working on engineering projects—year round.
Arnett’s father was unable to help with his education. After his first year of college, he was forced to ask his maternal uncle, also named John, for financial aid. John invited him to spend a weekend with him at Camp Sychar in Mt. Vernon, Ohio.
The young engineer imagined it was a recreation resort where he could rest up, swim, and date pretty girls. He was surprised and disgusted to read the sign on the entrance gate: “CAMP SYCHAR—HOLINESS CAMP MEETING.” He would have turned around on the spot if he had not been in such sad financial straits.
Today he says that “the summer of 1912 was to unfold the decisive drama of my life. By love God lured me into the Camp Sychar Holiness Campmeeting.” An eternal showdown took place. God “let me become so confused He could literally ambush me … and work out His precious will in my life. I came under the influence of some of the most powerful evangelists of the day, including Henry Clay Morrison, founder of Asbury Theological Seminary.”
On Wednesday, “Missionary Day,” Bishop Lewis, a Methodist missionary to China, spoke (with Arnett sitting on the very last bench of the tabernacle!). The bishop was a forceful orator, and Arnett was fascinated as he spoke of the engineering challenges in China. Dreams of becoming a “big shot” in China and making a lot of money flooded his mind. But something happened to dispel the visions of grandeur. Seamands calls it “The Miracle.”
Suddenly, in the air over the head of Bishop Lewis, a fiery-red ribbon of light flashed before Arnett’s vision. There in silver colored block letters was spelled “INDIA“‘ The vision was so strong and totally unexpected that he almost fell backward off the bench.
His first reaction was violent rebellion. He remembered the Indians he’d met when he worked at a government levee job on the west bank of the Colorado River, about 25 miles south of Yuma, Arizona. He’d seen many American Indians around Tucson, but these were different! These were coolies from India. Arnett looked at their long, wadded hair, listened to their strange language and chants, watched them worship idols, and smelled their curry and rice. He concluded, “These people are the scum of the earth!”
Seamands is convinced that this racial prejudice was a factor in God’s calling him to India. “I think God said, ‘Look what a boner this guy is pulling. The only way to cure him is to send him to India to serve these people for the rest of his life!’ After a tremendous struggle with conviction, I surrendered myself to Christ that Sunday.”
Seamands categorically states, “After that divine intervention, my life became a little bit of Heaven on earth. God lifted me to an amazing plane of victory which has remained to the present.”
Just as the Apostle Paul had to spend three years in Arabia, Arnett spent the next seven years preparing for missionary service to India, including four to complete his civil engineering degree.
The winter of 1915 was especially memorable because of two special events. The first happened on the night of January 7. While walking home from class, he consecrated himself totally to Christ and was filled with the Holy Spirit “and power!”
Scarcely a month later, on February 22, he was married to Yvonne E. Shields. They had met in the fall of 1911 while Arnett was working on a project in Cleveland, Ohio, during a two-week period outside of class. They courted largely by “remote control” for the next several years. The result—one of those lifelong unions “made in Heaven, delivered in Cleveland.”
The Seamands became missionaries under the Methodist Episcopal Church. On October 30, 1919 Arnett, Yvonne, and their young son, J.T., reached Kolar, South India. “It seemed to me the Heavenly Father had found someone to take from Indian territory in Arizona and send to the Indians in India. One place prepared me for the other. The climates are similar. I traded rattlesnakes for cobras and pythons, and bobcats for panthers. The food in both places can be hot as a firecracker. Yes, I was in missionary school while I was in Tucson, being mentally and physically prepared.”
Seamands immediately went to work in the Methodist Trades Institute, a large industrial school where boys were taught various trades. Graduates “went forth into an unfriendly world as carpenters, cabinetmakers, iron workers, motor drivers, repairers—economically adequate for their lives ahead.” The Institute also manufactured modern agricultural implements. In this work they were pioneers in all of India. Agriculture was revolutionized in the State of Mysore.
Tata Seamands was an “evangelist-engineer.” He found a critical shortage of buildings as evangelism progressed. The Hindus and Muslims had magnificent temples and mosques. The cause of Christ could not be properly represented without churches. When he built his first church in 1941, there were only 11 Methodist churches in the whole South India Conference. From that time until 1958 when he retired, 57 churches were built. Including other projects, he constructed a total of 178 buildings.
Another problem faced Seamands. If Indian Christians remained true to Christ, they could not attend the enticing Hindu Jatros (religious festivals) which constitute a great part of India’s life. Christians must have a yearly event of equally dynamic proportions. So in November 1923, Seamands and M.D. Ross, a missionary colleague, founded the Dharur Jungle Jatra, an Indian Christian campmeeting patterned roughly after camp Sychar. Dharur camp has grown steadily throughout the years, and may now be the world’s largest campmeeting, with about 45,000 attending yearly.
While in India, a second son, David, was born to the Seamands. Both J.T. and David returned to India for missionary service after attending college and seminary in the United States.
Tata Seamands concedes his retirement has been unusual. Since 1958 he has made nine “shuttle service missions” back to India, serving a total of 15 months. He runs a sort of “Seamands Faith Missionary Society” out of his home. He laughs and says, “I’m president, secretary, typist, office boy, and promotional agent. Christ is the head, the Holy Spirit the Director. I’m refilled, retired, refired, rehired, and serve India as much as possible.”
He runs a never-ending fundraising campaign for building projects, as well as other needs in India. Since retirement, he has piloted a total of 139 building projects. His goal is 200 churches “by the time Christ calls or comes.” The “fields white unto harvest” include 200 to 300 village congregations in the South India Conference still without church buildings.
Tata is always quick to emphasize what a difference Christ makes in a life, and what a tremendous event it is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. He reminds us that he was once a racist toward Indians, but “in their midst, seeing personally the spiritual, physical, educational, and economic needs of the Indian people … I began to become all things to all men whereby the more could be saved.”
There is a special plaque on the wall of Arnett’s study. It commemorates that on October 17, 1976, Tata Seamands was named “Missionary of the Century, 1876-1976” by the South India Conference of the Methodist Church in Southern Asia. The award honors him for his years of service in India, the last 18 being in “active retirement.”
Tata Seamands realizes that a call to the mission field does not come to all people as it did to him. God had to use dramatic means to get Saul of Tarsus. So He did to get rebellious “Seamands of Tucson.”
He advises those who feel a call to “wait on the Lord. The needs of the world are so great and missionaries are so few. I don’t think God will delay revealing His will. Say, ‘Here I am, Lord. I’m ready.’ Work day to day in obedience and somewhere the call will be made specific.”
The Indians call E.A. “Tata” Seamands a “practical mystic.” They are used to holy men who lead solitary lives, striving only for their own salvation. The concept of a holy man active in the world, concerned with his fellow man and helping the less fortunate, was unusual. They found such a man in E. A. Seamands.
Ruth Seamands, daughter-in-law, brings the story up-to-date:
For the last three and one-half years, Arnett has been fiercely faithful in daily visits to his wife in the nursing home. When he couldn’t get a ride with family or friends, he’d go down to the gas station and hitch a ride. He carried a card file of both love songs and Christian songs which they sang together as long as possible. Then Arnett sang them alone to Yvonne. She died in September 1981.
At this writing, Seamands is now, age 90, making plans for another visit to India. He says, “I must see my people again. If I die there – well, India is very close to Heaven. let them cremate me and scatter some of my ashes near little David (his grandson who died in India at the age of nine months). Scatter some of my ashes at Dharur, and bring the rest home to bury beside Yvonne. I’m looking forward to India and to Heaven—for the end is not yet, praise the Lord!”
by Steve | Nov 4, 1981 | Archive - 1981
Archive: How Ann Became an Evangelist
by Bob Withers, Pastor, Ball’s Chapel and Fairfield United Methodist Church
Copy Editor, The Herald-Dispatch, Huntington, West Virginia
Pastors often hear their parishioners say, “Oh, if God would just give me a message to take to someone.” Or, “I would tell my neighbor about Jesus if I could be sure it’s God’s will.” These thoughts filled Ann Casto’s mind as she traveled to Clarksburg, West Virginia, in a van filled with preachers and other nervous laypeople to participate in a statewide witnessing weekend.
Ann, 47, was no stranger to church work. Since her husband, John, was an area captain for the state Department of Natural Resources and subject to frequent transfers, Ann had worshiped with several congregations. Now at Fairfield United Methodist Church near Glenwood, she was teacher of the ladies’ Bible class. Her pastor had prodded her into participation in this witnessing event. But somehow Ann was jittery about treading through doors usually darkened only by ministers. Personal evangelism—everybody favors it but nobody does it!
As the van neared Clarksburg, Ann’s fears lingered. She was obsessed by a fear of confusing someone—saying the wrong thing and adding to a prospect’s spiritual perplexity.
“Lord, grant a miracle this weekend,” she prayed, “so I’ll know You are in the arrangement.”
Ann and a local escort, Nina, were asked to call at the home of a 57-year-old semi-invalid named Ruth, whose husband worked out of town. Her only weekday companion at home was a 13-year-old son, Billy.
Ruth had already turned away one visitor that day because she wasn’t feeling well. Several health problems had led to lengthy hospital stays and virtual incapacitation. She was scheduled to visit a hospital the next day for minor surgery.
“She may not give you much time,” a friend had warned Nina.
The prospect admitted her visitors but gave them a cool reception.
A short, heavily-built woman with thinning auburn hair, Ruth was not an emotional person. Remaining quiet and nibbling on something, she seemed uptight and made no effort to turn off a nearby television. It was obvious she didn’t intend to open up.
Through faltering conversation Ann began to see Ruth’s extreme loneliness. She was a member of Broad Oaks Church in Clarksburg, but hadn’t been counted among its worshipers for several years. One thing became certain: she was not sure of her salvation.
After a few minutes, Ann sensed the Holy Spirit taking over. Her fears began to melt away as Ruth described her lengthy illness and her eroded relationship with God. She talked of problems with her family, finances, alcohol, and a first marriage that ended in disaster. Ann felt an overwhelming sense of compassion for her hostess.
“I’ve done too much; I’m too deep in sin,” Ruth lamented. “No one, not even God, cares for me.”
“The Lord cares about you, Ruth,” Ann quickly countered. “Jesus loves you and died on the cross to atone for your sin. He wants your soul AND body to be healed.” She explained the plan of salvation, the need to confess sin to God, and even the possibility of healing supernaturally as well as naturally.
Ann told her prospect, who now listened attentively, about how God helped her through the ordeal of losing her 14-year-old son to an unexplained ailment.
“Would YOU be afraid to die?” Ruth pointedly demanded of her visitor.
Ann was prompt and firm. “I’m sure I wouldn’t when my time has come. But I think God has more plans for me.”
Ann reacted politely to objection after objection.
“Ann had an answer for everything,” Nina recalled later. “And she wasn’t pushing or cramming. She said everything in an easygoing way.”
To her amazement Ann found that the dialogue wasn’t strained as she thought it would be, not hard work at all. “Everything seemed to just fall into place,” she said, crediting the guidance of the Holy Spirit and a solid grounding in the Word.
Finally, she asked, “Ruth, may we pray with you?”
Somehow, the shut-in’s shell had been shattered. Ruth’s eyes were brimming with tears as she nodded in affirmation. Her guests knelt beside her chair, placing their hands on her head. Ann began to pray audibly.
When the prayer was over, all three were crying. A radiance—punctuated with a warm smile—had transformed Ruth’s face.
“I sure do feel good,” Ruth declared. Her despondency had disappeared. “You all really care, don’t you?”
Outside, Ann and Nina hugged each other tearfully. “I wouldn’t have missed this for anything,” Nina exclaimed.
After more calls, the ladies met 19 other visiting pairs at Broad Oaks Church for a sharing session. They began to learn that God works through His people—whether they have ordination papers or not. And they rejoiced!
This story has a sobering postscript.
From the moment of Ann’s and Nina’s visit, Ruth’s destiny seemed to turn. She began to tell her family the good news: ” Now I know I’m saved.” She telephoned neighbors, describing the encounter and affirming that now nothing separated her soul from God.
Five days later, Billy got up to go to school and found his mother’s body on her bedroom floor. God had called her home.
Ann, Nina, Ruth’s family, Broad Oaks Church, and many others rejoiced that God had used the women in such a marvelous way in reconciling Ruth to Himself. And they were equally as glad that the pair had been obedient to God’s leading.
Their story needs to be repeated again and again. Others should enjoy this victory of rescuing a precious soul from spiritual death. How many Ruths are there in the world? Their time is running out, and they don’t know Christ.
Somehow, the church has to awake to the call of the Great Commission and realize that evangelism is everybody’s privilege. Nowhere in Scripture is it reserved for pastors. In fact, Acts 8:1,4 shows that when persecution forced Christians out of Jerusalem it also fanned the fires of evangelism, for they went everywhere preaching the Word. Notice that the Apostles, church leaders of the day, stayed behind. The “church members” carried the message.
Paul sets the church’s priorities straight in Ephesians 4:11-12. There he states that it is the pastor’s job to equip or train the church members. They, in turn, must do the work of ministry. Here is not a view of an ordained minister evangelizing and answering to a church full of critics. It is a picture of an evangelizing membership with a pastor who is their trainer, coach, and cheerleader.
Today many congregations have lost this vision. With few exceptions, they exist as an inert army of believers who cower in their barracks, expecting their generals to wield the Sword of Truth for them, while their own swords remain tucked away in their scabbards. Meanwhile, millions around the world perish without Christ.
In a nation where three out of four homes are un-churched, and 45, 000,000 children are a part of nobody’s Sunday school, it doesn’t take a mental giant to realize that the ordained ministry must enlist help from the pews. Otherwise, America and the world will never be won for Jesus Christ.
Paul’s challenge to the Romans speaks loudly to us:
“…Now it is high time to wake out of sleep … the night is far spent, the day is at hand. …”
