by Steve | Mar 12, 2018 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March-April 2018
Wanda Jackson, the Queen of Rockabilly. Photo provided by Wanda Jackson.
By Steve Beard-
It was a surreal scene for a teenage girl to be cruising down the highway in 1956 wedged in the front seat of a Pontiac Star Chief between her father and Elvis Presley. But that was the dizzying case for 18-year-old Wanda Jackson right at the time when rock and roll was percolating and beginning to flip American teen culture upside down.
As a budding country music starlet from Oklahoma City, Jackson was recruited as the lone female performer to play alongside rock and roll pioneers such as Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, and Elvis. “They were kind of like my brothers,” Jackson told Good News. “I always kind of preferred the company of men, anyway. I had my dad there and it made it possible to work with that many men. I wouldn’t have done it had I been alone. I couldn’t have.”
With her father as her chaperone and the watchful guardian of her reputation, she was not permitted to ride with the guys, but Elvis was allowed in the front seat of their Pontiac on the way to the next concert stop.
Jackson, 80, known as the Queen of Rockabilly, still performs live, has released dozens of albums, and has been nominated for multiple Grammy awards. Her many fans include Bob Dylan, Adele, Jack White, Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen, and Elvis Costello. Jackson’s new autobiography Every Night Is Saturday Night: A Country Girl’s Journey to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (BMG) is a coming-of-age memoir of how a knock-out performer could have a five-decade career in country, rock, and gospel and not lose her soul.
Without a doubt, Jackson’s relationship with Elvis played a key role in the trajectory of her career. When they first met in 1955 at a radio station on the first stop of a tour, she had never heard of him. Nevertheless, Jackson thought he was handsome and charming. Not long after, they began dating. “He asked me to be his girl, and I had his ring,” she said. She wore it around her neck for about a year before their career paths tamped out their long-distance relationship. The romance did not last, but she still has his ring – and fond memories.
Originally, Wanda’s father couldn’t comprehend Elvis. “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that,” he told Wanda as they both watched Elvis with a bright yellow coat and slicked-back pompadour getting into the front seat of his bright pink Cadillac. “Elvis might as well have been getting into a rocket ship,” Jackson recalls in her book. “You might should stay away from that one, Wanda,” her dad said. “I think this Elvis character could be a nut.”
Eventually her father grew to admire Presley. It was the young singer from Memphis that convinced Jackson to transition from country music to the newly minted rock and roll sound that was becoming a cultural sensation. “We knew that Elvis had stirred things up and times were changing,” Jackson told me. Presley tried to convince the Jacksons to look to the youth market – the ones buying the records and calling the radio stations.
Wanda’s father saw the wisdom in the advice. “I think Elvis is right,” he told his daughter. “I think there’s a new trend coming.” Everything was happening so quickly. “We didn’t know how long it would last but Elvis made me promise that I would try it,” she said. Despite her misgivings, she eventually knocked out spitfire hits such as “Mean, Mean Man,” “Fujiyama Mama,” “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad,” and “Let’s Have A Party.”
Jackson was a certifiable shimmering star and glamorous renegade in the male-dominated golden era of rock. She played guitar, got scolded at the Grand Ole Opry for trying to get on stage with exposed shoulders, and provocatively had an African-American piano player at a time when strict segregation was brutally enforced. Her 2009 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction finally celebrated her indisputable musical legacy.
At the same time, Wanda and her husband, Wendell – an IBM computer programmer who became her manager and publicist (who died last year) – were suffering all the side effects of fame, partying, and life on the road. “After about 10 years it was pretty hard,” Jackson said. “Wendell was very jealous and that caused problems. … There was a lot of drinking – the outcome of that was treacherous. … We loved each other. We didn’t ever think about divorce. Murder, a couple of times,” she joked with laughter. “No, we loved each other, but we were drinking too much. We were gone too much. We were arguing. I couldn’t live that way and neither could he.”
The success, liquor, and showbiz lights were not enough distractions to heal her spiritual ache. “Sometimes I would lie in bed at night with a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was missing,” she wrote. “I felt restless and anxious. … But I still couldn’t shake that dull but persistent sense of emptiness inside.”
In 1971, The Living Bible, paraphrased in common language, was published and she read it out loud to Wendell as they were on the road. “We tried to make sense of it,” she said. “We were really searching.” While they were away, the Jackson’s two children were being cared for by Wanda’s mother. The kids loved the new pastor at their church and hounded their parents to hear him preach. “Even though we were open to trying to understand the Bible during those long stretches of interstate, we weren’t that anxious to go hang out with a bunch of church people,” Jackson wrote. “That wasn’t really our crowd.”
Between tours, the pastor informally connected with the Jacksons and ended up being as personable and engaging as their children had reported. What Wanda and Wendell remembered from their time with the minister was his direct message: “Everyone needs Christ, no matter who you are. Sometimes people are afraid to admit they need Christ, and they’re afraid to turn to Him because they feel like they’re not good enough or they’ve done some things that make them feel like God couldn’t possibly love them. But He does.”
They wrestled with the weight of those words while they were back on tour. “We were running,” she recalls. “Running from the reality that our marriage was suffering. Running from the fear that our lives were unraveling. Running from Brother Paul’s words that everyone needs God.”
When they returned home from the concerts, they fulfilled the promise to their kids that they would attend church. “We got up late – kinda hung over – but we were late getting to church,” she said. While in the service, Wanda sensed a divine voice say, “Walk with me.” She turned to Wendell. “There is something I’ve got to do,” she said. “Let me out of this pew. I’ve got to get right with the Lord.” He joined her.
“We took hands and walked down the aisle and gave our hearts and lives to Christ,” she recalled, as the congregation sang the old hymn, “Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior.” “It was just unbelievable. The pressure was lifted off. The guilt, the sin, was lifted off. It was just marvelous. We were two new creations in Christ. Everything changed for the better.”
Photo provided by Wanda Jackson.
The shift of spiritual dynamics also detoured Jackson’s career path. “I started to record gospel. That’s where my heart was,” she told me. “I wanted everyone in the world to know the salvation that I experienced.” That decision was fraught with its own challenges. “I had never had stage fright playing in honky tonks, but the first few times I sang at churches, I was so scared I was throwing up before I went on,” she wrote. “I was used to singing for people who were there for a party. It was nighttime, and there was smoke, and everyone was drinking and acting silly and having fun. Suddenly, there I was in a long dress – not a miniskirt – and no fringe and no go-go boots. And it was daylight and everyone was sober! I didn’t know how the church folks would react to me.”
She was caught in a cultural and spiritual skirmish. The country music disc jockeys wouldn’t play her gospel. “They thought it was too churchy,” she said. “And the church, on the other hand, thought I was still too country. I fell through the cracks.” Over the next decade, she recorded half a dozen gospel albums and she and Wendell shared their gospel message all over the world.
Jackson’s career took on another unexpected twist with the eruption of a rockabilly revival in the 1980s. She discovered that she was still considered a star in Europe and Scandinavia. The fans lined up to hear Jackson playing her classic hits. Meanwhile, The Stray Cats, The Blasters, X, The Cramps, and Rosie Flores were spearheading a rockabilly resurgence in the United States. Her songs had once again found a receptive audience.
“She’s vibrant and edgy without being abrasive, and sweet without being saccharine,” observed musician Roseanne Cash, daughter of Johnny Cash, at her Rock Hall induction. “This is a woman who has rhythm and joy, in equal parts, to the depth of her soul…. She’s not a red-carpet-celebrity-hand-out-rehab-tabloid kind of person. She’s a person of strong religious conviction, deep integrity, a road warrior, and a rock and roll queen.”
Each generation has turned in one way or another back to Wanda Jackson’s music. Her last two albums were produced by critically-acclaimed recording gurus Jack White and Justin Townes Earle. “I believe God has given me two deep desires, and He’s provided me with the opportunity to fuel them both,” she testifies in her book. “First, I love to rock ‘n’ roll. It’s great to get on the stage, feel those drums pounding behind me, and get the audience on their feet. Second, He gave me the desire – and also the courage – to talk about my faith onstage, whether I’m at a church revival or a punk rock club.”
She testifies that there is a “holy hush” that falls on the audience when she talks about her faith in God. “Every once in a while, I’ll have a drunk girl sarcastically yell out ‘hallelujah’ or something. Some guys have mouthed off a little bit, but the audience will shush them for me, so I don’t have to say anything,” she wrote. “I think my fans respect me, but I also try to be cool and respect them by not talking too long.”
After her talk, Jackson launches into Hank Williams’ “I Saw the Light.” “Almost everyone knows the words,” she said. “They start clapping and singing along with me. It’s like a Baptist revival.”
Hank deftly crosses over in honky-tonks and sanctuaries. So does Wanda.
“I’ve learned what it means to find peace and meaning, sometimes in the face of adversity,” she concludes. “I’ve learned to find my grounding in a good man, a good family, and most importantly, in a good God, who is the source of all light and truth. These are the influences that have allowed me to keep the musical party going for decades.”
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News.
by Steve | Mar 12, 2018 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March-April 2018
Pete Shilaimon is the producer of the new movie Forever My Girl. He was born and raised in Baghdad and escaped Iraq with his family to avoid religious persecution. Photo by Rosie Collins, courtesy of Catholic News Service.
By Courtney Lott-
“God created human beings; he created them godlike, reflecting God’s nature. He created them male and female. God blessed them: ‘Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.’” – Genesis 1:26-28 (MSG)
At the beginning of the world, the God of the universe made humanity in his own image. He stamped his likeness on us so we might reflect him more than any of his other creations. Each one of us reveals his character in unique and special ways. “I was merely thinking God’s thoughts after him,” observed Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), the great scientist, astrologer, and mathematician. “Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God.”
Some of our brothers and sisters see divine interaction through reason and logic. Others see it through God’s creative nature. These minds produce art, music, drama, poetry.
As Christ followers, our art should be the best art. After all, when we create we are walking in our father’s footsteps after him. Unfortunately, so much modern Christian art – movies, music, books – comes across as cheesy at best and lazily done at worst. When a faith piece is executed well, audiences sit up and take notice. These are the kinds of movies Pete Shilaimon strives to produce.
Shilaimon’s road to Hollywood was a winding one. Raised in Iraq, his family fled to Greece when the war with Iran broke out. As refugees, the family looked to his mother for guidance and wisdom, a practice Shilaimon keeps to this day. “Faith is big for my family,” he says. “It’s played a very key role in my life and my decisions. Pretty much every decision I have a conversation with my higher power, Christ, and I talk to my mom.”
For college, Shilaimon attended the University of California, Irvine. There he majored in theater and eventually moved to Los Angeles. For a few years, however, he drifted away from the film industry. Wanting to help people get in shape, he opened a gym and Pilates studio in Beverly Hills. Countless producers and actors came to him for health and wellness. Eventually, one of his clients encouraged him to become a producer himself and asked Shilaimon to go to Atlanta to work on the film The Grey. Shilaimon has gone on to produce such movies as Risen, The Zookeeper’s Wife, and Jackie.
Throughout his career, he has striven to make quality faith-based movies. Shilaimon believes it is a slap in the face to such stories if they are cheesy or their production value is a mess. This is why he seeks to make films that are accessible to everyone, not just an audience who will go see anything with a message about God. In Risen, he focuses the story on Clavius, a Roman soldier who is faced with doubts about everything he has believed in while searching for the body of Christ.
“If you really think about Risen, that movie was so spectacular because we’ve all been in Clavius’ shoes where we questioned our faith, or questioned our journey,” Shilaimon says. “We cheat ourselves when we just make faith based films for just the faith base. I think it’s a disservice for the faith base to be honest.”
It is honesty and vulnerability that make a film resonate rather than reverberate. Themes of doubt, of questioning, ofinsecurity, and forgiveness reach a wider audience because they are relatable. Forgiveness is the theme of Shilaimon’s newest project, Forever My Girl. Based on a book by Heidi McLaughlin about how people mess up over and over, this film portrays a beautiful picture of confession and forgiveness.
In Forever My Girl, a country music star named Liam Page goes back to his hometown for the funeral of his best friend from high school. There, he faces the consequences of leaving his bride Josie at the altar to chase after fame and fortune.
Though the main plot centers around a romantic relationship the story deals with familial relationships as well. “It was such a relational story that I thought there was something beautiful and magical there,” Shilaimon said. “The dad is a preacher. And that angle was really sweet because he’s going on and on about forgiveness and how we as human beings really need to love and forgive each other. And how we need to pick people up and not throw them down. So it resonated with me because it’s what my mom teaches my brothers and my sister and myself.”
Written and directed by Bethany Ashton Wolf, Forever My Girl is the fourth female director LD Entertainment has utilized in two years. As a production company, Shilaimon said it believes very strongly in empowering women to direct, giving them equal pay, and providing equal opportunities.
“We need to treat women in Hollywood the same way we treat our men,” Shilaimon says. “Four female directors in two years is unheard of. Women are just as talented as men. We were hiring them before it was cool.”
Belief drives the art Shilaimon makes. There are some movies he has produced that merely make it possible to create the ones he’s passionate about, and there are some movies he made years ago he would not make today. Realizing this is simply a matter of growing up, he says. Now, Shilaimon has more freedom to create the stories he is passionate about.
“My company believes in all the films we make,” he says. “Some are commercial, some we make from pure, pure love because we love the subject matter.”
Courtney Lott is editorial assistant at Good News.
by Steve | Mar 12, 2018 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March-April 2018
By Rob Renfroe-
The United Methodist Church is at a crossroads. We are a divided church, and the truth is, we are a hurting church. Some believe our differences are so great and the ongoing battle so destructive that it is time to part ways. For over four decades, conservative and progressive United Methodists have expended enormous emotional, financial, and spiritual resources to gain the upper hand in a denomination that has declined every year since its founding in 1968. Surely our efforts and our finances would be better devoted to evangelism, discipleship, and missions. For the sake of the lost and the poor, shouldn’t we set each other free to pursue what we see as God’s calling upon our lives and our ministries?
Others believe we must do all we can to remain united. Those who champion this view do so because of the unity that Christ prayed for in John 17. They contend unity makes us a more effective church and therefore more likely to fulfill our mission of making “disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” We are better together, they claim. But, of course, that begs the question: Are we really together?
Our differences go deeper, to some of the foundational questions of what it means to be the church: Is Jesus Christ the only way to God? Is his death on the cross the only means for salvation? Are the Scriptures fully inspired and authoritative for revealing God’s will and binding on how we should live? We believe the answer to these questions is a resounding Yes! while others in the church would answer differently. The painful truth is that we cannot agree on these central matters of our faith.
When a United Methodist bishop writes that we must not make an idol out of Jesus – the definition of an idol being “a false god” – while others believe Jesus is “very God of very God,” are we together?
When a professor at one of our United Methodist seminaries teaches that other religious figures bring the same light to their followers as Jesus brings into the world, while others believe Jesus is utterly unique – the way and the truth and the life – are we together?
When one of our bishops encourages his churches to pray that we “take the next faithful step forward not based on … doctrine, tradition, or theology; judgments, fears, or convictions,” and many of us believe that it’s our theology and doctrine that tell us what it means to be faithful – are we really together?
Many also recognize there are profound differences in the way we approach the Bible. More than a few laypersons would be surprised to learn many pastors and bishops would align themselves with the approach of the Reverend Adam Hamilton, the founding pastor of Church of the Resurrection (Leawood, Kansas), when it comes to biblical interpretation. Hamilton has proposed what might be called a “three buckets” approach (he calls his three categories buckets): (1) some parts of the Bible were never actually true expressions of God’s will, so they do not apply to us, because they reflect only the time and place in which they were written; (2) other parts were true expressions of God’s will at one time, but no longer are, so they do not speak to our current context because God’s will for us has changed; and finally, (3) there are those parts of the Bible that were true, still are, and always will be.
This interpretive strategy is foreign to Wesleyanism and to orthodox Christian teaching in general. Others believe, myself included, along with the Apostle Paul that “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). We are profoundly uncomfortable with the idea that certain parts of the Bible can be discarded because, contrary to what the church has believed for two thousand years, we who live in and have been influenced by a postmodern culture now know better. When we do not agree on the inspiration and authority of God’s word – are we really together?
The inspiration of the Bible. The divinity of Christ. How we are saved from our sins. How we determine God’s will for our lives and for the church. These are not small matters. They strike to the core of what it means to be Christian. If United Methodists are not together on these foundational issues – and we’re not – can we really claim that we are together as a church?
The United Methodist Church in general has been able to overlook some of these differences because we do not vote on them at General Conference. And many pastors are careful not to reveal to their congregations their less than orthodox beliefs. They know the uproar it would create if they were open and honest about their views. As progressive pastor Rev. Tom Griffith stated years ago in his article in Open Hands, “Give a Cheer for Our Evangelical Brothers and Sisters”: “Although the creeds of our denomination pay lip service to the idea that scripture is ‘authoritative’ and ‘sufficient for faith and practice,’ many of us have moved far beyond that notion in our own theological thinking.”
Griffith continued, “We are only deceiving ourselves – and lying to our evangelical brothers and sisters – when we deny the shift we have made. … We have moved far beyond the idea that the Bible is exclusively normative and literally authoritative for our faith. To my thinking, that is good! What is bad is that we have tried to con ourselves and others by saying, ‘we haven’t changed our position.’ ”
But for over forty years we have had a very public and divisive debate about our church’s sexual ethics. Our differences regarding this important and sensitive topic have become painfully apparent. That division has grown to the point that The United Methodist Church is now in crisis. So much so that in 2016 the General Conference instructed the Council of Bishops to create a commission to develop a plan to end the rancor that has come to characterize General Conferences and much of the life of the church.
Even with our differences regarding sexuality and marriage, we have been able to stay together as a church so far because we have had a common practice. We committed ourselves to welcoming all people to receive the ministries of the church, regardless of how they identified in terms of gender or sexual preference. We also agreed that our pastors would not marry same-gendered couples, nor would “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” be ordained to the ministry. Though evangelical United Methodists believe Scripture speaks clearly against same-sex practice, we could live in a church with different opinions because we had a gracious, biblical position we all covenanted to uphold.
Of course, that’s where we were, not where we are. One of our US jurisdictions has now elected a married, lesbian bishop who has stated that she has presided at approximately fifty “holy union” ceremonies for gay couples. Many other pastors (including at least one bishop) have performed same-sex marriages, and the defiance of some has been met with as little as a twenty-four or forty-eight hour suspension. Others have been tasked with writing a paper on why the church should liberalize its teachings on marriage. In other instances, bishops have completely dismissed complaints filed against pastors who performed same-sex weddings. At this point a number of annual conferences and boards of ordained ministry have defiantly and publicly rejected our church’s ordination standards. And even though our Judicial Council has ruled their defiance out of order, at least two have voted to ignore the council’s decision. One bishop, in defiance of the church, has even commissioned and ordained openly gay, partnered clergy.
In a recent address, Bishop Scott Jones stated, “Twelve of our [US] annual conferences are in schism right now. They are unwilling to live by our covenant and that places them in schism. This is the first time that bishops and conferences have deliberately disobeyed the General Conference since 1844.”
Twelve annual conferences. That’s over one-fifth, and there are others who do not live by the Discipline; they just haven’t stated so publicly.
Before we can begin to answer the question, “Are we better together?,” we must first ask, “Are we together?” Regrettably, the only honest answer to that question is to frankly acknowledge we are not.
Many of our churches no longer use official United Methodist curriculum in their classes because they do not trust it. Many of our congregations no longer pay all of their apportionments because several of our boards and agencies are unaccountable to the local church and promote progressive causes contrary to Scripture. Many of our largest churches no longer include “United Methodist” in their names because they believe our “brand” has been tainted and therefore being associated with it harms their ministry. Some churches, including two of our largest, have even left the denomination because they felt the turmoil in the church impeded their ministry.
Are we still one church? If we are, then we cannot act as if we are two. If we are two churches, then we should no longer pretend to be one.
Every pastor who has been ordained in the United Methodist Church and every layperson who has joined since 1972 knew or should have known the church’s position that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Over thirty years ago (1984), General Conference voted to prohibit the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.” And for more than twenty years (beginning in 1996) the church has instructed pastors not to perform same-sex marriages. Of course, persons who disagree with the church’s positions have every right to advocate for change. But what they do not have is the right to defy our teachings and at the same time condemn and attempt to shame others who support the church’s views.
We in the United States must constantly remind ourselves we are a global church. Therefore, we must recognize that the vast majority of United Methodists believe our teachings are graciously stated and well grounded in Scripture and rooted in two thousand years of Christian tradition. They have been taught and practiced by Christians in all times and in all places, and still are today. Only a small and struggling minority of US Protestant churches has endorsed teachings to the contrary. We should not strive to be like them.
People on all sides are sincere in their beliefs and committed to them. For the sake of justice, progressives feel duty bound, on their reading of Scripture, to work for the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in every aspect of the church.
We evangelicals cannot change our position without, in our own minds, compromising our belief in the inspiration and the authority of the Bible. That’s something we will never do. What’s the solution? More fighting and endless debate? Stricter rules and stronger punishment? Another forty years of delusional thinking that if we just stay at the table, debating and arguing with one another, we will be able to reconcile irreconcilable positions?
No. Now is the time for us to honestly acknowledge we are no longer together, and pretending we are is not a viable option. The best way forward is a fair and amicable separation, where both sides are free to pursue what they believe God is calling them to do.
Rob Renfroe is the president and publisher of Good News. He is the author of several books, including the brand new Are We Really Better Together? with Walter Fenton (Abingdon 2018). This excerpt published from that book by permission.
by Steve | Mar 12, 2018 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March-April 2018
By Elaine A. Heath-
“The thing is,” my neighbor said conspiratorially, “I really love to iron. I iron everything. I iron every day.” Corrine, a Lutheran, lived across the street and was a faithful member of a neighborhood spiritual formation group that I led. She had grown up in the Depression, kept a very tidy house, and was a fabulous cook. She adored Elvis Presley. I adored her.
“What is it about ironing that you find so meaningful?” I laughed.
“When I iron, it’s a kind of ritual. I put the water in the iron and plug it in. As I press the fabric, the steam rises, all fragrant and clean. All the wrinkles go away. One by one they go away. Something about the steam, the wrinkles, and the regular movement of the iron across the board brings peace to me. I feel at home and at ease. Things that were troubling me don’t seem so overwhelming. I even feel closer to God. It’s a spiritual thing.” She paused, then grinned sheepishly. “You probably think I’m crazy,” she said.
“No, Corrine, I think you are a contemplative,” I answered. “You have found in ironing what others have found through forms of prayer that involve the five senses, bodily movement, and a repetitive activity that quiets the mind and opens the heart to God’s presence.”
“Golly,” she said. “Who knew?”
What Corrine discovered in ironing is a “means of grace,” to use John Wesley’s language. That is, ironing is a pathway for her to encounter the healing, peaceful, loving presence of God. Thomas Keating might note that, for Corrine, ironing became a form of centering prayer, a way to descend from her mind into her heart. Wesley didn’t write about ironing as a means of grace, but he would likely affirm Corrine’s experience, especially since Corrine regularly participated in worship, partook of the Lord’s Supper, read the Bible, prayed, and took part in our neighborhood spiritual formation group. Wesley felt that anything and everything can become a channel of God’s love for those who are always open to and seeking God.
With wonderful generosity Wesley argues that people can experience God without external acts such as reading the Bible or fasting. The acts themselves are simply channels through which grace flows. He also firmly denounces empty ritualism in which Christians go through the motions of prayer, worship, and so on but have no desire for God’s transforming work in their lives. Indeed some of his harshest words in sermons and elsewhere are directed toward Christians who love “a form of godliness without the power.”
But Wesley was concerned about these spiritual disciplines because he faced in his own context a “spiritual but not religious” movement of Christians who left the church and abandoned the means of grace. These Christians felt it was no longer necessary to read the Bible, partake of the Lord’s Supper, gather in worship, or engage in other ordinary Christian spiritual disciplines because Christ’s direct love was enough. Wesley was alarmed about the corrosive effect that this movement would have upon Christian commitment, because most of us need habitual practices that daily open our hearts and minds to God’s transforming love. Moreover, without regular reminders we will drift away from God’s missional call to love and serve our neighbors.
In all things Wesley’s goal is for Christians to participate in God’s good work, carrying the love and power of Jesus into the world. He calls this process of increasing holiness “going on to perfection.”
There are five means of grace that John Wesley called “instituted,” meaning these are spiritual practices that were instituted in the New Testament and are binding for all time and in all places. The five means of grace are prayer, searching the Scriptures, the Lord’s Supper, fasting, and Christian conferencing.
One beautiful aspect of Wesley’s theology is that spiritual practices are seamlessly integrated with practices of loving our neighbors well. This is why Wesley said there is no holiness but social holiness. A life of genuine prayer inevitably leads to a life of hospitality, mercy, and justice. Each of the five means of grace help us as communities of faith to pray more deeply and live more missionally as followers of Jesus Christ.
Elaine A. Heath is Dean of the Duke Divinity School and Professor of Missional and Pastoral Theology. She is the author of numerous books, including Five Means of Grace: Experience God’s Love the Wesleyan Way (Abingdon), from which this was adapted. Reprinted by permission.
by Steve | Mar 12, 2018 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March-April 2018
Royal Faith
By Steve Beard-
There is an intriguing scene in Season 2 of the wildly successful historical drama, The Crown, on Netflix. For the uninitiated, the award-winning series revolves around the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, the now 91-year-old sovereign of the United Kingdom.
At the beginning of episode six, Elizabeth (played by Clare Foy) is studiously watching Billy Graham preach on television in 1955 while sitting with her mother in Buckingham Palace. The Queen Mother (played by Victoria Hamilton) finds Graham to be more than an acquired taste for the upper class British religious sensibilities. She appears perturbed that the public is captivated by a man who learned his trade “selling brushes door-to-door in North Carolina” and that British subjects turned “out in droves for an American zealot.”
“He is not a zealot,” Elizabeth responds.
Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth II and Matt Smith as Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh in The Crown a Netflix Original. Photo source: Robert Viglasky | Netflix
“He’s shouting, darling,” her mother replies. “Only zealots shout.”
Much to the chagrin of the palace staff, Elizabeth asks that an invitation be extended to Billy Graham for a visit. In The Crown, Graham (played by Paul Sparks) fittingly preaches in Windsor Chapel on what it means to be a Christian: “As I was thinking about what to preach about today, I considered various topics which speak to me personally, but I thought that I would start with a simple question. What is a Christian? The Bible tells us; Colossians 1:27 says that a Christian is a person in whom Christ dwells. It’s Christ in you, the hope of glory. It means that you have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. That encounter has taken place. You have received Christ as savior. And that is what a Christian is.”
“I enjoyed that very much,” Elizabeth tells Graham after the service. “You do speak with such wonderful clarity and certainty.” She admits her “great joy” at being “a simple congregant, being taught, being led … to be able to just disappear and be…”
“A simple Christian,” Graham says to assist in finishing her thought. “Yes,” Elizabeth replies, “Above all things, I do think of myself as just a simple Christian.”
Script. Off script. Of course, that dialogue was all from the creative mind of The Crown creator David Morgan. We actually don’t know much about their encounter except from what we learn from Graham. “When we filed into the Royal Chapel, I looked around to see the location of the pulpit. I was stunned to realize that the chapel had no pulpit, just a place to stand. I carried a thick sheaf of handwritten notes on extra paper and was forced to leave them behind when I got up to speak,” the evangelist recalled in the pages of Billy Graham: God’s Ambassador, a memoir of Graham’s photographer Russ Busby. “I had prayed so much about this moment that I knew however simple and full of mistakes my sermon would be, God would overrule and use it – but I’ll tell you, I could really feel my heart beating.”
Paul Sparks portrays Billy Graham in The Crown. Courtesy of Netflix.
The earlier mentioned tense exchange between mother and daughter in The Crown may have utilized a tad too much artistic license in the screenwriting technique of having the Queen Mother give voice to the many naysayers within British society who were overtly skeptical of Graham’s message and style. His visit was an overwhelming cultural moment and a headline-grabbing experience. Great tension and passion surrounded his rallies. There were more than 30,000 posters with the face of the evangelist and the simple message: Hear Billy Graham!
“No one in Britain has been more cordial toward us than Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” Graham wrote in his autobiography, Just As I Am. He is now 99 years old and living in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I believe one reason for the Queen’s spiritual interest was the warm faith of her mother, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother,” he wrote. (The Queen Mother died in 2002 at 102 years of age.)
The unscripted reality is that there was an undeniable special connection between Graham and Queen Elizabeth. “I always found her very interested in the Bible and its message,” he wrote. “After preaching at Windsor one Sunday, I was sitting next to the Queen at lunch. I told her I had been undecided until the last minute about my choice of sermon and had almost preached on the healing of the crippled man in John 5. Her eyes sparkled and she bubbled over with enthusiasm, as she could do on occasion. ‘I wish you had!’ she exclaimed. ‘That is my favorite story.’”
While the relationship was warm between certain members of the royal family and Graham, the young fiery evangelist was still acquainting himself with becoming the preeminent international Christian evangelist.
In Prophet Without Honor, Graham biographer William Martin gives a taste of the reception the evangelist received from the British press. The London Evening News, for example, called Graham an “American hot gospel specialist” who took “his listeners strolling down Pavements of Gold, introduces them to the rippling-muscled Christ, who resembles Charles Atlas with a halo, then drops them abruptly into the Lake of Fire for a sample scalding.” Other media outlets dismissed him as “Silly Billy” and peppered him with questions such as, “Who invited you over here, anyway?” “Do you think you can save England?” and “Don’t you think you’re needed more in your country?”
During his first visit to England, Graham learned that his bright ties and socks proved to be a distraction to the understated British society. On his second go-round, he was very concerned about making the right impression by arriving with a new fedora and a conservative dark coat. He also asked his wife, Ruth, to not wear lipstick since some of the church leaders viewed it as worldly.
“Bill stooped from being a man of God to become a meddlesome husband and ordered my lipstick off,” Ruth wrote in her diary. “There was a lively argument – then I wiped it off. He got so busy getting the bags together I managed to put more on without notice.” She later commented, “It doesn’t seem to me to be a credit to Christ to be drab.”
When the Grahams arrived in Waterloo train station, they were met by a “perfect mob,” recalled Ruth. William Martin quotes an eyewitness who stated that “women screamed and fainted, babies and children were passed over the heads of the crowd, newspaper stands were overturned, and burly railway policemen were swept aside….” Ruth remembers, “The press of the crowd was so terrific that Bill and I were instantly separated. Cheers went up, and the air was filled with ‘God bless you’ and ‘Welcome to England.’”
A Royal Faith
Long before Billy Graham appears in The Crown, the creators had already given slight indications of Queen Elizabeth’s sincere Christian faith. She is shown kneeling next to her bed in prayer and inquiring of her elderly grandmother, Queen Mary, about the divine “calling” of royalty. “Monarchy is God’s sacred mission to grace and dignify the earth,” Elizabeth’s grandmother tells her before her consecration. “To give ordinary people an ideal to strive towards, an example of nobility and duty to raise them in their wretched lives. Monarchy is a calling from God. That is why you are crowned in an abbey, not a government building. Why you are anointed, not appointed. It’s an archbishop that puts the crown on your head, not a minister or public servant. Which means that you are answerable to God in your duty, not the public.”
Once again, these are the scripted words of The Crown’s creators. Nevertheless, Queen Elizabeth has used her Christmas address each year to publicly profess her faith with her own conviction. “Christ not only revealed to us the truth in his teachings,” Elizabeth proclaimed in 1981. “He lived by what he believed and gave us the strength to try to do the same – and, finally, on the cross, he showed the supreme example of physical and moral courage.”
As the Queen of the United Kingdom and the head of the Church of England, Elizabeth has never been timid about admitting her allegiance to Jesus Christ. “To many of us our beliefs are of fundamental importance,” she said in 2000. “For me the teachings of Christ and my own personal accountability before God provide a framework in which I try to lead my life. I, like so many of you, have drawn great comfort in difficult times from Christ’s words and example.”
Although she oversees a nation that is better known for empty cathedrals than religious revival, the Queen remains a beloved world leader who speaks eloquently, humbly, and respectfully from a heart of faith.
“For me, the life of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace,” she said on Christmas in 2014, “is an inspiration and an anchor in my life. A role-model of reconciliation and forgiveness, he stretched out his hands in love, acceptance and healing. Christ’s example has taught me to seek to respect and value all people of whatever faith or none.”
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News. This article was originally published in the March/April 2018 issue of Good News.
by Steve | Mar 12, 2018 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March-April 2018
By Duane Brown-
One of life’s great blessing is to have clear vision, and few things are more frightening than the prospect of losing one’s sight. During the summer of 2013, I began losing my vision. For nearly six months I stubbornly ignored the problems. After multiple exams and prescription changes, the doctor said cataracts were growing in my left eye. I had surgery to remove the cataracts and replace my existing lens with an implant. What a transformation! My vision was restored almost instantly and now it’s the best it has ever been.
At times, I have lost my missional vision as God’s redemptive change agent for a lost world. There is a great spiritual harvest awaiting God’s Church. Jesus said, “I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for the harvest” (John 4:35). It’s easier, however, to fashion for myself a world that fits my personal likes and tastes. Like blinders on a horse, I focus on the things in my world that are important to me. As the famous comedian Flip Wilson often said, “What you see is what you get!”
Too many North American churches settle for mission only in their local community and are not guided by a strategic Acts 1:8 model (“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”) that involves local and international outreach. Churches may also function in ways that focus mostly on serving the physical needs of others with scant attention to proclaiming Christ and making disciples. That’s why TMS Global, the agency for which I serve, seeks to mobilize believers and churches to make disciples, especially among the least reached peoples. Through our training and coaching called “Activate,” churches often receive a restored vision of their world.
Our training utilizes raw data to demonstrate the reality of the world’s spiritual needs. For instance, while many know that some 7.3 billion persons inhabit the earth, they are unaware that a staggering 2.2 billion persons have never heard the name of Jesus to them. While speaking to a pastor about this astronomical number of unreached, he disagreed, saying it is too high an amount. I responded, in effect, by asking if one billion persons is convincing enough to him that there really is an overwhelming need.
The Activate training also examines how God sees the world. We see the world as one comprised of countries with political and geographical borders. God, however, sees the world as more than 16,000 distinct people groups, with their own distinct history, language, beliefs, and identity. Of that 16,000, more than 3,000 are considered unengaged and unreached, with no Bible in their language, no church in their community, and no critical mass of serious Christ followers.
An examination of exactly where churches are sending cross-cultural witnesses can be revealing. Most church mission committees believe they are doing their part by supporting a cross-cultural witness, regardless of location. As one pastor said to me, “We send checks to support church planters in another country.” That is important. Yet, what most don’t know is that nearly 97 percent of the cross-cultural witnesses supported and sent around the world serve in “traditional” mission fields, locations in which Jesus is already known. Most cross-cultural witnesses do not serve among the 2.2 billion unengaged and unreached peoples who have never heard of Jesus. (I am thrilled that TMS Global sends approximately 30 percent of our cross-cultural witnesses to the unengaged and unreached.)
When all the data is combined – populations, people groups, and where cross-cultural witnesses are sent – a church’s vision for outreach can change drastically. Churches begin to realize the most strategic work for them is to be intentional about mission outreach among the unengaged and unreached. As we have often discovered, when a church adjusts its missional energy to meet a world that has yet to see Jesus, the church’s vision of its role in global outreach becomes much clearer.
Duane Brown is the senior director of church ministry at TMS Global (tms-global.org).
