Was Jesus a
Pacifist?
Influential Friends
The Man Who Launched My Ministry
Bert E. Wheeler, my wife’s father, was a major influence on
my ministry. He moved his family
from Michigan to Florida when Doris was 10 years old, and made a home for them
in what was then called Uleta, and now is North Miami Beach. In Michigan he was a farmer; in Florida he worked at various jobs.
Bert and his wife came to
Florida as evangelical Quakers. Not finding
a Friends church nearby, they became members of the Church of the Nazarene. The Lord had called him to preach, and he pastored churches in Florida,
Alabama, and Georgia. His pastorates
were of brief duration, usually two to four years. He pastored one church twice, and another three times, for he was always
well loved and deeply respected by those he served.
Bert was handicapped by lack of formal schooling. He studied hard, but always found mental labors tougher than physical labors. A big, strong man, he could do a block mason’s work with readier expertise and endurance than he could turn pages and digest knowledge from books. He did the best he could with the resources he had, and no church or life was ever touched by him without being bettered.
He was my second pastor. When I was called to preach my first pastor gave me no encouragement whatever. He told the people I wasn’t really called to preach and didn’t have what it took to become a preacher. I confess there have been times when I blundered along in the pulpit like a sad fulfillment of his negative prophecy.
But Bert Wheeler believed that God had called me. He invited me to come to Bartow, Florida, where he was then serving, and preach my first sermon on Palm Sunday, 1941. I preached poorly, but it launched a ministry of gospel preaching that has continued steadily until now.
When he returned to pastor the Uleta church he encouraged me further. One day he said, “God has called you to preach, and you will never learn to preach without preaching.” At his invitation I preached my first revival meeting, alternating the pulpit with another young man Bert was helping along also. I did some decidedly eccentric preaching, but In that first revival my mother and my sister found Christ, together with some other converts who became “pillars” of that church.
Men and boys in the community who were not Christians, as well as those who were, loved Bert Wheeler. A group of them would frequently drop by his house, saying, “Come on, Preacher, We’re going to play ball.”He would grab his glove and share the game with zest. He was “a man’s man” but never guilty of any macho strutting. He used to make trips from Michigan to Florida on an ancient Harley Davidson motorcycle, back when good roads were rare travel luxuries. Those who spent hours with him at work and at play never heard tainted conversation from his lips. He nearly always told new congregations that his ears were not garbage dumps; he would not listen to gossip. He made no moral compromises to win anybody’s favor, but he was always immensely well liked. Integrity was a word constantly applicable to him.
He and Mildred were both working for Champion Spark Plug Company when they married. After he found the Lord he returned some tools he had taken from the plant, confessed the theft, apologized and testified for Christ. I was on a train once, headed for a revival meeting, and a well-dressed man asked if he could share my table in the dining car. While we ate he told me he was an executive with Champion. I related my father-in-law’s story of making restitution for those purloined tools after becoming a Christian. The man was surprised and impressed. Many employees stole, he said, but to his knowledge none had ever made their thefts right. Before departing he handed me a ten-dollar bill and told me to put it in the revival offering. He wanted to share an enterprise that could produce a man like Bert Wheeler. That was back when ten dollars was a generous offering.
In Uleta Bert began his preaching on Sunday mornings in the community center. That required some early morning cleanups after Saturday night parties, dances, and other activities had been staged there. When some persons objected to the building being used for church services, he didn’t contend with them. Instead, he announced one Sunday morning, “Any of you who would like to help start a Church of the Nazarene, meet at my house next Sunday morning.”Over sixty people crowded into his modest home! Before long a lot was purchased and a tent erected, which led soon to the construction of a small frame church and parsonage.
This tough but tender ex-Marine was never fully comfortable in formal situations. When I married Doris, he officiated at the ceremony. The church was packed, for the whole community loved Doris. I never saw Bert so nervous before or after. He read the marriage ceremony from the Manual of the church, but he sounded like he was reading from the Greek New Testament.
My father was not a Christian and rarely attended a church service, but he held Bert Wheeler in high esteem. In the providence of God he and mother moved to the country in north Florida and for years they lived across the road from the Suwannee River Church of the Nazarene, pastored three times by Bert. Dad was saved one Sunday morning in one of our Gainesville, Florida churches. I was there to dedicate my sister’s baby and to preach. While mine was the joy of preaching the gospel message to which Dad responded, I know that much of the preparation for that moment was done through years of friendship from Bert Wheeler.
I never knew a better man than my father-in-law. I learned that he once had a bad temper. When a balky tractor refused to start, he took a heavy wrench and beat the engine housing down to the engine. He was as rough on horses, and once delivered a knock down blow to the head of a farm horse that was stubbornly disobedient. I never knew that Bert Wheeler. He had been transformed and gentled by the Christ who saved him from sin. I knew him as a living demonstration of the message of holiness that he faithfully proclaimed.
To Bert Wheeler I owe an eternal debt. My ministry began at his invitation and encouragement, and his ministry was extended and expanded through my own across many years. He took quiet joy in what I achieved and made an investment in me that I believe, by the grace of God, was richly repaid. My memories of him challenge me to be a better man and minister.
Jim Hamilton
I met Jim Hamilton when he was the young pastor of our Murray Hill church in Jacksonville, Florida. I liked him at once and the longer I knew him the more affection and respect I felt for him. He became one of those rare friends that a man could visit with briefly, not see him again for years, and still feel as close to as if he lived next door. He never realized how strong and good his influence was upon my life and work.
Jim called me to conduct revival services at that Jacksonville church, and there our acquaintance ripened into friendship. He honored me by calling me for revivals in all the churches he served as pastor.
His next charge was in Delta, Colorado on the Western Slope of the Rockies. I took a train to Grand Junction Colorado, and Jim met me there and drove me to Delta. Due to a train schedule snafu, I had missed the opening service of the revival, and Jim had to preach. Riding toward Delta I asked, “What did you preach about tonight?”He replied, “Bill, did you know that Daniel killed Goliath? Throughout my sermon I kept saying Daniel when I meant David.”
When I was with him in Delta, I was thirty years old and had never seen snow. The meeting was in November and I told the congregation that I was praying for snow. To a person they said, “We might get some light snows out on the mesas, but not in town—too early for that.” On a Friday snow covered the town, to my delight.
While serving in Delta Jim took further college work in extension classes at nearby Montrose. I urged him to keep that up, believing that his future would probably lie in the field of education. His next move was to Englewood, and there he completed a doctoral program at Denver University. When I preached in revival services at Englewood the respect and affection of the congregation for him was highly evident. He had few if any peers as a compassionate, devoted pastor and preacher.
While I was serving as a pastor in
On Friday I flew home, not expecting or caring to set foot in
Alas! It was not to be. When
I began my teaching ministry at
Pasadena College he began his with
Nazarene Theological Seminary in
When I moved to the
In addition to his teaching and preaching, Jim also had a private counseling service as a psychologist. Several times I suggested that I become one of his clients, but he never consented. Either he thought I was jesting, or else he figured I was a hopeless case better left alone.
After I retired, Doris and I were summoned to serve as interim pastor at
our Kent Washington church for several weeks. That proved to be one of the happiest times of our lives.
Shortly after arriving there, the church had a family camp on beautiful
After his retirement, Jim was responsible for having me twice called to
preach in a camp meeting held annually on the western slope of the
Not long after Jim retired, his wife Dorothy died, leaving him alone in their lovely retirement home. I have a copy of the tribute he paid to her at the funeral—a warm, witty, loving tribute that makes you smile through tears.
In October, 2000 Jim conducted a Family Life Conference for our little
church here in Gainesville,
He called me one day to tell me that he was happily married again. I’m glad, for it seems to me that the wide-open Western spaces he loves would accent a man’s loneliness.
No man has had a more helpful, challenging and salutary influence on my life and work—and he seems surprised that this should be so. He is a man of unimpeachable integrity. He is genuinely humble but never obsequious. He is not impressed with titles and easily sees through stuffed shirts and bloated egos. He is pure gold in every way that really matters.
William Greathouse—A Friend and Exemplar
He had been a professor of theology there and had established a well-deserved reputation as a gentleman and a scholar. His expertise in the teaching of John Wesley was especially remarkable. He invested years in pastoral ministry, also, and his messages, in content and structure, were excellent. Best of all, he united ability, integrity and humility in an admirable combination.
During the time that he was writing his first commentary on
Romans, I was a pastor in Atlanta. He flabbergasted me by asking me to read and critique his work—me, who
knew less in ten years than he did in ten minutes! As it happened I also had some library resources on Romans that he did
not have, and I gladly supplied them to him. Sometimes I would meet him at the
The time came when he said, “I want you to teach at Trevecca. ”We pursued the idea a number of times and I was honored and excited that he would want me on his faculty. About the time our plans were coming into focus he was “kicked upstairs”—elected president of Nazarene Theology Seminary. That ended my dream of teaching at Trevecca.
When I did begin teaching at
In 1965 Trevecca conferred an honorary doctorate on me. I knew that Dr. Greathouse played a major role in the board’s decision. Usually those honors went to district superintendents, and I asked him if
they had run out of superintendents that year. He assured me that the degree was in recognition of my academic
abilities, not a reward for effective church politics. Even that did not prepare me to imagine that he would commend me to the
After he took the reins of the Seminary, from time to time I would see him or Dean Willard Taylor, and they would say, “We want to bring you to the Seminary to teach. ”The idea was enormously attractive to me. Once again, however, the dream was dissipated—Dr. Greathouse was elected General Superintendent. I told him afterwards, “Every time they kick you upstairs it drops me downstairs.”
Shortly after I went to
When I moved to
When I retired after thirteen years as editor, I was given
a check for one thousand dollars from the General Board.
Dr. Greathouse made a speech in which he said, “Bill McCumber stands ten
feet tall.”I told them
I only wish that in retirement we lived near each other, for there is much that I could learn yet from one of the premiere teachers in the Wesleyan tradition. I’ve never known a man who wore the mantle of greatness more quietly and unassumingly than he does. He has been, intellectually and spiritually, one of the major shaping influences upon my life and work.
One night I had a surprise phone call from him. He said, "I'm calling some of the persons who have had a major influence on my life."I was almost stunned to be included in such a group. He told me he had just finished a manuscript, a new commentary on Romans. Not long ago I received from the publisher a copy of the two-volume commentary. I have read it through, underlining the more significant passages, as Charlie Brown said. I plan to chat with Dr. Greathouse about it in heaven, but I will have to wait a while. He will be somewhere talking to the Apostle Paul about his letter to the Romans or talking to John Wesley about his doctrine of holiness.
A Big Frost
After I found Christ and began preaching, one of my finest friends was Raymond Frost, a big fellow from Alabama. At the time I met him Raymond was a railroad engineer and he and his family attended our Uleta church. Raymond was also an ordained elder and an eloquent, compassionate preacher.
When I took my first pastorate I had Raymond come for revival services. On arriving he said, “Bill, let’s go to town. I have to buy some trousers.” We went to a number of stores before he finally found a pair that would fit. He would walk into a store and ask the owner or clerk, “Do you have a pair of pants big enough to fit a man?” One store owner asked, “How big is that?” Raymond laughed and said, “Forty-six waist.”The owner replied, “That’s not man-size, that’s mule-size.”
When I was a member of my father-in-law’s country church in
When I was serving our church in
Raymond had a keen sense of humor. He saw the funny side of even starchy people. More important, he could laugh at himself. He became a diabetic and had to give himself injections of insulin. That big man was afraid of little needles. He said, “Bill, I backed myself clear out the house three times before I finally put that needle under my skin.”
He and his wife Laura had known real heartache. One of their children, when just five years old, was playing near the street on which they lived. A man driving past was blinded by the setting sun and struck and killed little “Bum,” as the parents had nicknamed the boy. Years later when Raymond would speak of the tragedy the tears would wash his cheeks. He was an affectionate man.
In terms of preaching ability I would place him on a level with the best I’ve ever heard. As a warm-hearted older friend, he stood even taller.
John McKay—One Who Encouraged Me.
John McKay was a missionary to India
for years. When he returned to the
I don’t recall much about the meeting, but two things have stuck in my memory. One, the youth of the church had an all night prayer meeting following the Friday service. John McKay was a firm believer in prayer. I was amused during the night to watch some of the teens valiantly fight sleep and try to stay alert in prayer, only to nod off in the midst of their intercession. The other thing I recall is that John took a deep personal interest in my career and sought to encourage me. He said, “The church is going to discover you one of these days and your opportunities for ministry will be multiplied.”That did happen, and God has been pleased to bless and use me as a pastor, revivalist, college teacher, radio speaker, writer and editor. How much I owe to the loving prayers of John McKay I cannot know, but I’m sure they were a major factor in my development and achievements.
In the providence of God, which often takes surprising twists, Myron
Wise, who married Betty McKay, became pastor of the
After John died, Mary lived in Chattanooga,
I can close my eyes now and hear the deep voice of John McKay with its thick Scottish burr, proclaiming the gospel and pleading for missions as he did deputation work in our churches. He was a holy man, fully devoted and committed to Christ, and to remember him is to feel challenged anew to be a better person and better preacher myself. When John comes to mind, I always wonder how many preachers and laypersons have been impacted, as I have been, by the spirit, the faith, and the love of John and Mary McKay. Their number must be legion.
My Funniest Friend
With several other pastors, he and I were having lunch in Lanette, Alabama at the Holiday Inn. The waitress brought our tossed salads to the table. Paul looked at his, which was noticeably smaller than the others, and asked the young woman, “Did you toss this salad yourself?”“Yes, I did,” she replied, “Is something wrong?” “When you tossed it,” Paul lamented, “you should have waited for all of it to come down.”
When our twins were small they loved Paul. They called him “Doc.”When he would drive into our yard they would come running to the house, exclaiming, “Doc’s here! Doc’s here!”He never left without saying “Come go home with me”—an old Southern custom. The little guys always took the invitation seriously, and when we said, “No,” they would wail from broken hearts. I finally threatened to kill Paul if he didn’t stop issuing that ersatz invitation.
I worked with Paul when he contracted to paint the historic Three Toms Inn in Thomasville. On that job I learned that he was a patient man. We were on the same scaffold, painting the south wall of the building. I was enjoying the sunny day and humming a tune as I moved the brush back and forth. Suddenly Paul said, “McCumber, stop flipping the brush.” I looked at him and his face and glasses were speckled with white paint. He had endured it silently until it became hard to see what he was doing because I spattered him so steadily.
While we were neighboring pastors, Paul was struggling with the course of study. He asked if I would help him one evening a week, and I agreed to be his mentor. Sometimes it was fun, always it was work, and now and then it would place me on the edge of distraction. He wanted to argue with every page he read. I kept telling him, “Paul, the examiners don’t care whether you agree with these scholars or not. They want to know that you understand what the writers are saying. You won’t have to prove or disprove their positions.”He forged ahead, not always at full steam, and got through the course. He was ordained at the district assembly in 1955.After the service he came to me and said, “McCumber, you should have been the one to lay hands on me. If you hadn’t helped me I would never have finished that course.”I said, “Paul, if I ever lay hands on you it won’t be to ordain you.”He would have made it without my help, for he was smart, but it would have taken him more time and given him less joy.
While he was incurably funny most of the time, he was never a clown in
the pulpit. He preached revival
services for me at Thomasville, and he brought some choice messages, solid and
serious and searching. He did us
good. I also preached in revival
services at his pastorates in
One night I was visiting a friend who had a bakery in Thomasville when a customer came in and said, “Did you hear about that Nazarene pastor in Cairo ?He got drunk and beat up his wife. They’ve got him in jail.” Paul’s wife was a sweet and gentle and friendly person, and no one would ever rough her up unless he was drunk or crazy. I told the man he had to be mistaken, but he swore it was “the God’s truth.”I jumped in my car and drove to the parsonage in Cairo. There sat Paul and Ruth, like two lovers, in the porch swing.“Mc Cumber!” he exclaimed, “what brings you over here tonight?”
“When did you get out of jail?” I asked. I told him the news that had reached me, and he started laughing.“Does Ruth look beat up to you?”He and I made inquiries and discovered that another of our pastors, whose church was at Whigham but who lived in Cairo, had indeed hit the bottle and was in jail for beating his wife. Paul chuckled for years over my hasty trip to investigate the matter.
Speaking of sweet and gentle Ruth, one day Paul was grunting and groaning and breathing with difficulty because of broken ribs. He had been on the floor doing some exercises when Ruth appeared at the door to the room, saw him, yelled “Geronimo!” and dove on him like a wrestler seeking to pin the opponent. That was so out of character that we could scarcely believe it happened, even when she confessed that it was true.I said, “Well, a fellow that gets drunk and beats his wife deserves a few broken ribs of his own.”
Paul had an unfortunate experience in Alabama. A black woman began to attend his services and one Sunday went to the altar, wept, confessed, believed and was beautifully saved. After a few weeks went by she requested membership in the church. Some of the board, not delivered from racist and bigoted attitudes, wanted to thumbs down the request. Paul took her into the church and they put him out of the church.
I never admired him more than I did for the stand he took on that issue. He would not sacrifice moral convictions in order to be accepted or retained by those who did not share them.
When I retired and moved back to Georgia, I was looking forward to seeing him quite often. Alas, he had, for economic reasons, moved to Clermont, Florida. But his son-in-law, Gerald Woods, became pastor of our Winter Haven church, and toward the end of life Paul had all his children within a few miles of his home. That was a source of tremendous comfort to him and Ruth.
His life ended in an Orlando hospital on Sunday, June 21, 2000.Shortly before he had called me a couple times to assure me of his prayers when I was recovering from open-heart surgery. Actually, he was worse off than I was. He had been suffering terribly from infected lungs and a bad heart. His passing brought deep sorrow to all who loved him, but brought a merciful end to the agony he was undergoing. Doris and I drove to Winter Haven, where I brought a message to family and friends gathered for a memorial service.
At that service I met a young man who had placed a lighted candle next to a picture of Paul on the table that stood in front of the pulpit. The family told me that this young fellow had been a patient in the hospital, and shared the room with Paul. His life was nearly ruined by sin, but Paul won him to Christ. The candle was a symbol of his gratitude to God for the man who had brought the gospel to him.
Had there been time to inform and await others, most of the preachers Paul had known would have been there, for they all loved this genial servant of Christ. I look forward to seeing him again in heaven, where, I am sure, he already has lots of angels in stitches, laughing as they have never laughed before.
Frances Roberson—a Tragic Death
When I served our
God used my preaching and pastoral care to reach
Glenn was a big, strong fellow, heavily muscled and deeply
tanned from the hard work of cutting and hauling timber. One day
Somewhat to my surprise, he replied, “Conviction. Bill, I’m under awful conviction for sin. It has made me physically sick. I can’t eat, can’t sleep, and can’t work.”
“If conviction is your illness,” I told him, “forgiveness is your medicine.”
“I know,” he said, “that’s why I sent for you. I need to get saved.”
We prayed together and I quoted promises of salvation for him to believe. Before I left he testified that the Lord had forgiven his sins.
The next morning I visited them early to get them started at family devotions. He immediately returned to work.
I don’t know what happened, but Glenn drifted away from Christ and over
the years became a heavy drinker and an abusive husband.
I had become pastor of our
Her first words were startling:“Bill, Glenn is going to kill me one of these days.”
She went on to describe their deteriorating marriage and his serious threats to kill her.
I did my best to console and encourage her but I did not succeed. I found it hard to believe that he would ever take her life, but I did not know to what extent evil forces had dominated his moods and deep rage had poisoned his inner life.
She visited us again, flying her own plane, a hot little Swift. She took the kids up for brief flights, and then said, “It’s your turn, Bill.”Truthfully, I didn’t want to go, for I disliked flying in small private planes. But I would not let the youngsters think they were bolder than dad, so we took off. When we were aloft she said, “Sometimes I feel like pointing the nose of this plane to the ground and letting it crash.”That was not very comforting to hear when I was a passenger! On landing she overshot the runway and the plane came to a stop just short of a grove of pine trees. “Hope I didn’t scare you,” she said. I was too breathless to respond.
Some months later she called me.“I’ve left Glenn, “she said, “and I have Diane with me. I won’t tell you where I am, for I know he will get in touch with you, hoping to find me. Just pray for us, please.”
Sure enough, he flew to
Diane, against her mother’s wishes, went to
Their situation worsened. On
Shortly before the shooting occurred, Frances, expecting the worst, had told Diane, “If anything happens to me, I want you to do two things. See that I am buried beside my mother, and get Bill McCumber to preach my funeral.”
Doris and I drove to
On Sunday afternoon, February 2, I conducted the funeral
service. Many of her relatives and
many of Glenn’s were there. The
tension was almost stifling. I spoke
to them all from 1 John 4:8-16, emphasizing God’s forgiving love and our need
both to receive it and to express it toward others. The interment followed at
Glenn recovered from his wounds. He later married one of the nurses who had attended him, but he only lived for a short while afterwards. I prayed often and earnestly for him, for he had been my friend, and I still loved him.
When brought to trial, he maintained that
It took me a long time to recover from the tragedy. I was haunted by questions of what I might have done to help them both get beyond their escalating conflicts and find reconciliation to God and one another. Thinking of this lovely friend who came to such a wretched end, I penned these words one morning:
Let rainbows arch her grave
Who bore dark
sorrow’s weight;
Her stone let sunshine lave
Who weathered
constant hate.
In pain with
every breath;
Love starved, she only knew
Abuse and
threats of death.
And now a shotgun blast
Has torn her
heart away!
God, grant her peace at last
And in Your
cloudless day
May she know love, and hear
Ten thousand
bluebirds sing!
O, drench her soul in cheer,
Give her an
endless Spring!
Dan Cheshire—A Friend Who Made Life Fun
She was a saleswoman with Stanley Home Products, and her “parties” took her from home several nights a week. On those nights Dan often came to the parsonage to visit with me. He would bring coffee, cheese and crackers, and we would drink and snack and converse. At one time or another we solved all the major problems of the church and world. The big redhead was great fun to be with.
My heart was broken when Ethel was promoted and the career change forced
them to move to
Speaking of fishing, we did well fishing with other people, but seemed to have bad luck fishing together. Still, we kept trying with the time-honored persistence of those who really enjoy fishing. Once Doris and I drove to Jacksonville to spend a few days with the Cheshires and Dan said, “We’re going to catch them this time. I am taking a guide, a fellow who knows where and how to catch fish in this part of the country.”We picked up “Shorty” before daybreak and headed for Crescent Lake, one that we had not fished before. All the way Shorty fired us up by naming lakes we passed near and telling how many fish he had caught there. When we reached our destination and put the boat in the water, Dan said, “Okay, Shorty, show us where to go.”Shorty answered, “Your guess is as good as mine. I haven’t been here before.”We rowed and reeled for several hours and not one of us got a strike. I was having dark thoughts about dumping Shorty in the lake to be eaten by turtles.
One year we vacationed on
Dan and Ethel had no children, but they loved children. Quite often they would take our three youngest, the twin boys (Bill and
Bert) and our only girl (Jean) home with them for a few days. The kids loved it and tried with good success to manipulate the situation
for extra goodies. Dan and Ethel
laughed for years about the time they were driving toward
Ethel died of cancer in February, 1968.During that last illness she suffered terribly but triumphantly, a
Christian witness to the last. I
visited her on the night before she died, and had scarcely reached home in
We got together as often as possible after Ethel’s death. In April that year my wife’s mother was in an automobile accident, and
was hospitalized in
In 1969 I moved to
Dan married again, linking his life with that of a lovely Christian widow
named Bertie Fox. They had many
happy years together. He retired
from his bookkeeping business and they moved to the country outside of
From one of those meals I drove away with a heavy heart. Dan was his old self when it came to sharing jokes but I could tell that his memory was failing. He was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's disease. No woman could have lived and loved more faithfully than Bertie did through his last days. She was the soul of patience and understanding.
On
Commissioner Sam Hepburn
When I was a boy the only religious organization conducting street meetings in Miami, Florida was the Salvation Army. Shortly after I found Christ I was standing with a group of people listening to Army music on the corner of Flagler Street and Miami Avenue. Beside me was Frank Leonard, whose Uncle Charlie, a large and happy fellow, was playing a big drum. Uncle Charlie came over and asked Frank to give a testimony. Frank was shy and said, “Here’s Bill McCumber from our Uleta church. He’ll give a testimony.” Well, I was more timid than Frank, but I wouldn’t miss the chance to put in a good word for Jesus. I joined the band, read some Scripture, and told the people how the Lord had transformed my life. A man in the crowd came to me and invited me to preach at an U. S. Army base.
Later, the Lord would bless me richly with opportunities to work with Salvation Army personnel. One of the finest men I ever worked with was Commissioner Sam Hepburn. While I was pastoring in Atlanta he invited me to speak at Camp Lake, Wisconsin, where officers of the Central Territory gathered for physical and spiritual recreation. Hepburn was Territorial Commander with his office in Chicago. He met me at O’Hare airport and expressed surprise that I was in my mid-forties.“From your writings,” he said, “I assumed you were older. I thought you were in your sixties.”
As we drove to Camp Lake he played one of his favorite tricks. When traffic was roaring past on the freeway he donned his cap. At once cars would slow down, for from a distance and at their speeds it looked like a policeman’s cap. That tickled him. By time we reached the camp I had bonded with this exuberant down-to-earth leader.
Sam had two passions, to renew an emphasis on holiness in the Army, and to revitalize the preaching ministry of Army officers. The Salvation Army, in his opinion, was known too exclusively as a social agency. In the interest of those goals, he had a building erected at the camp to house a library of hundreds of books, and to afford rooms for conferences and worship services.
I met some of the most wonderful men and women in the world at Camp Lake. And there, at Sam’s request I gave “lectures” daily on holiness and on preaching. The youngest of those assembled officers were no more enthused about ministry than was their white-haired Commander. One of his favorite expressions was “Wow!”I could soon judge the effectiveness of my messages by the number and volume of his “Wows!”
Salvationists can play music and sing like no other group on earth. One day they were boisterously singing a song entitled, “I feel like singing all the time.”Sam Hepburn leaned over to me and said, “We sing some things that aren’t true.”
As the week neared its close, Hepburn asked me to return the following summer and then asked if I would send him sermon outlines that he could reproduce and distribute to his officers in the Central Territories. For two years I supplied him with four outlines a month and I know some of the men and women got tired of finding them in their mail. I was also having outlines published monthly in our Preacher’s Magazine, edited at the time by Richard Taylor, who had first received them from Hepburn.
I returned to Camp Lake the next summer and enjoyed the fellowship in study and prayer and conversation immensely.
Commissioner Hepburn scheduled me back for a third successive year at Camp Lake, but before that summer rolled around he had been promoted to National Commander and his successor did not use non-Salvationists. I was canceled, not a novel experience for me. At our General Assembly in 1968 Sam Hepburn brought greetings from the Salvation Army, and publicly commended my work—to my surprise and to the greater surprise of my colleagues in our church.
Commissioner John Needham
Instead of returning to
We dined each day with a magnificent view of the Atlantic Ocean before us, and I shared some of the most energized and blessed services I have ever attended. How they sang and preached and responded to preaching with “volleys” of amens!
I first met John Needham when he headed the Army’s work in Georgia. He came to Thomasville, Georgia, where I was pastoring at the time, to preach the funeral of George Bowman, a lay officer who began the Army’s work in that town. Sergeant-major George Bowman was a splendid example of true holiness, and one of the choicest friends I ever had. Until his work was established and he began conducting Sunday services, he and his family attended our church.
After moving to Atlanta, I learned that John Needham had asked Sam Hepburn to share my outlines with his officers. Later I preached a number of times at his request at the annual Temple services in Atlanta, and I spoke and taught a few times at the Salvation Army’s Training College in Atlanta at the request of Major Eckstein and Colonel Talmadge.
In April 1969 I was the speaker at a retreat for the Salvation Army officers of the Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana division, at the invitation of Major Les Hall. One of the officers in attendance was George Bowman’s son. The retreat took place in Pass Christian, and I’m sure that I derived far more benefit from the fellowship than the Salvationists did from my preaching.
In January 1978 I did a two-day preaching seminary/workshop with the officers of the Missouri-Kansas division.
John Needham also became National Commander. And later he became the first American to head the Salvation Army’s work in Great Britain. Before going overseas he called me and said, “I need your help.” “What kind of help?” I asked. He told me that the British put much more emphasis on preaching than on social services, and wanted me to share some sermon materials with him. I told him I had prepared a series of sermons based on the first eighteen chapters of Acts, and I would be glad to send a copy of those .I did request that he not circulate them to anyone else, for I was planning to offer them to our Publishing House as a book manuscript. When my book, The Widening Circle, appeared in 1983 those messages had been pre-tested both in England and in America.
When the Lord took George Bowman, Les Hall, Sam Hepburn and John Needham to heaven, He enriched that place with some of the truest Christian gentlemen who ever served Him in the cities of this world. I was so fortunate to know them and work with them. Sam Hepburn did not know, nor could I have guessed, what he was getting started when he first invited me to address his colleagues in ministry.
The Army has always had a special place in my heart. I have been a bell ringer and a War Cry boomer for them in two of my pastorates. Had God so willed, I could have joyfully worn the uniform and served under their “blood and fire” banner. If I could have been cloned, one of me would have been a Salvationist.
He Lived What He Preached
David Monroe Coulson was a pioneer preacher in
the Church of the Nazarene. He was a
Texan, a tall man with piercing blue eyes. His last years were spent on the old
When he was a boy he stood with his father on the bank of a wide river.“How far is it to the other side?” his father asked. “I don’t know,” the lad replied. “That’s a good answer, Son,” his father said.“Never be afraid or ashamed of admitting you don’t know something.” Coulson never pretended a knowledge he didn’t possess. He was honestly humble and humbly honest.
He pioneered in New York City with C. B. Jernigan. They stretched a tent between two tall buildings, and in the summer that canvas was hot! One afternoon Coulson removed his coat while preaching. A woman, upset by this, arose and started to leave.“Just a moment, Sister,” Coulson called out. She stopped in the sawdust aisle, her back to him.“You are offended because I removed my coat. I am still clothed up to my adam’s apple and down to my wrists and ankles. But when you turned from me I could see the fifth joint in your backbone. Now you sit down and listen while I finish this sermon.”The woman dropped like a bean bag into the nearest seat.
Coulson came to the Southeast as pastor of our “mother
church” in the area—at
He could do it. He was a strong and courageous man. Once he was conducting a tent revival in a mid-western town and a local ruffian took umbrage at Coulson’s attack on whiskey. The angry man met Coulson in the middle of the street, whipped out a knife, and threatened to cut his heart out. Coulson quietly demanded, “Give me the knife.”The man glared at him and cursed, but Coulson gently repeated the order, stretching out his hand to receive the knife. The man finally handed over the knife and slunk away. Coulson told me, “I would step into any kind of danger for the gospel’s sake.”
He was not a scholar in any formal sense, but had some remarkable insights into the Bible and people. I once said, “You should write down some of your messages and have them published.”He replied, “I prepared a manuscript once. Before I could submit it to a publisher my wife threw it into the fireplace and destroyed it.”He added immediately, “I couldn’t fault the poor woman, though. She had lost her mind and wasn’t responsible.”
D. M. Coulson was a practical man. He wore dentures and carried a spare set in his pocket. He explained to me, “I have a lightweight set for preaching, and a
heavier set for chewing solid food.”
He was preaching at our
While I was his pastor D. M. Coulson was living in the
parsonage at
A neighbor dropped by the parsonage to check on Coulson, who hadn’t been seen for a day. He found the old preacher on the floor. Coulson had fallen and broken his leg. He was saying, “Praise the Lord! Glory to God!”The neighbor exclaimed, “Man, your leg’s busted. How can you praise the Lord?” Coulson replied, “Because I’ve got two legs and the other one’s not broken.”Life can’t defeat a man with that kind of spirit.
When Coulson died he had passed his ninetieth birthday. Friends who were at his bedside told me that his last words were, “It is
glory.”I knew what the gallant old
warrior had meant. Shortly before he
died, he had preached his last sermon at our church in
Men and women of Coulson’s love, faith, courage and integrity poured their lives into the foundations of our church.
Howard Melton—Like a Brother to Me
It’s safer to write about the dead, but Howard is still
living, retired, in
I first saw Arcadia in 1945, there to preach revival services with our church. Howard was on the seas somewhere, for he was serving in the Merchant Marine on vessels that steamed to distant ports with supplies for our army personnel. I met his wife, Velma, who could not believe that I didn’t know Howard.“Everyone knows Howard,” she told me, in a way that expressed her conviction that I was either forgetful or deprived. He and I have laughed for years about how well-known she thought he was.
In 1946 I became the pastor of our
We bonded quickly, and I was with him as much as possible. One of the church members felt like we spent too much time together. If she saw us walking together when she drove through town, she would lean her head out of the car window and yell, “There go the Gold Dust twins.”If you remember those twins, who adorned boxes of a popular laundry product, you are “getting along in years,” as women used to say who couldn’t bring themselves to admit, “I’m getting old.”I don’t know about twins, but we did look enough alike to be brothers. I went to several of his family reunions and the “shirttail cousins” would hug and kiss me believing that I was one of their relatives.
When Howard was first pastoring in
Later in life than most people do such things, Howard
enrolled at Trevecca
He was the pastor at
After he retired from pastoral ministry Howard moved back
to his beloved
Howard has always been cheerful, the kind of fellow you can
visit a while and come away feeling better about everything.
I saw him in “the slough of despond” just
once, after Hurricane Charley devastated Arcadia on
Like me, he has outlived his siblings. He takes great joy in his family and friends, and looks ahead (as often as a historian can) to an eternal dwelling place with “all God’s chilluns.”
If he is allowed to work on a history of heaven he will never leave cloud nine.