God, Rocks, and Souls

This is an introduction to John McLarty’s book in progress, GOD, ROCKS, AND SOULS, a memoir of an “old, white, liberal Adventist pastor”.

What follows is a “chapter…not in its final form” from that book in progress.http://godrocksandsouls.blogspot.com/

Chapter 50. The German New York Seventh-day Adventist Church

I called Elder Roehn a couple of days after my appointment with the president.

“Hi Elder Roehn. How are you? Elder Kretschmar talked to me the other day and asked if I would come and work with you. I was wondering if we could get together and talk about what you expect of me.”

“Yes, John, I think we can get together some time. This week I’m pretty busy, maybe next week sometime.”

“Okay, I’ll give you a call next Sunday.”

I hung up the phone laughing. Elder Roehn did not sound surprised by the news I was coming as his assistant. Neither did he sound eager to talk with me. This was going to be interesting.

Sometime during the previous year, maybe as much as six months earlier, I have been asked by the Gardeners, principle English-speaking couple at the German Church, to help lead a Bible study at the church on Sabbath afternoons. Marilyn Gardner would cook a big pot of soup and invite English-speaking people who attended church in the morning to stay for lunch and a Bible study. I would finish preaching at Babylon, visit briefly in the lobby, then most Sabbaths race off for Manhattan, arriving about 2:00 p.m. for the Bible study.

Elder Roehn never attended. I never saw him.

The Sabbath after my conversation with the conference president, Karin and I drove into Manhattan as usual. Besides the four or five regulars, Kurt and Gertrude Paulien were there. Kurt was the head elder. Before getting into the Bible study, we visited a bit about my coming as Elder Roehn’s assistant. Kurt wanted me to take over preaching as soon as possible. What had been happening was Elder Roehn would preach three Sabbaths a month. Kurt would sit in the back and attempt simultaneous translation for the hand full of non-Germans present. And Dr. Gardner preached in English one a month. Kurt was eager to see the language of worship move from German to English and Herb not was a particularly compelling speaker even if German was your native language.

Kurt did have one complaint. Why, he wanted to know, when I had been at the church before, did I never attend board meetings? I was surprised by his complaint. No one had ever invited me to board meetings. I knew they happened once a month, but I had no idea I was welcome, much less expected to attend.

Marilyn Gardner, especially, was warm in her expression of happiness at the prospect of my coming to the church in a pastoral role. I began to dream about ministry in the city again. Much as I loved Long Island, it could never be more than comfortable. Dreaming of ministry in Manhattan was exciting.

I called Elder Roehn on Sunday. His week was really full, but finally he agreed for me to come by his house on Tuesday. Herb and Eva lived on a quiet, tree-lined street in Queens. He welcomed me into the curtained living room. It was dark and immaculate. We talked.

“So how long have you been at the German Church?”

“I came in 1968. I’ve been here a long time. I’ve watched conference presidents come and go, and projects and campaigns. I’ve seen a lot, John. I don’t get very excited any more when the conference announces some new program that’s going to finish the work and save the city. I’ve been here too long for that.”

“Does Eva like it here?”

“Yes. We built this house, practically. You should have seen it when we bought it. It was a dump. So every year for about five years, I spent my two weeks of vacation working on the house. I completely gutted the upstairs all the way down to the bare studs. Pulled off all the old plaster and lath. Pulled out the old bathroom. Everything. After we finished the upstairs, we started on the downstairs. We like it now. It’s ours. We know the neighbors. I think we’ll stay right here after I retire.”

I asked about his daughters. One was doing well. The other had been a constant source of concern, in and out of relationships with wild guys. A grandchild. He talked about the church. Described some of the work he had done on the physical plant and work that needed doing in the near future. At one point he complained about Elder Kretschmar sending me without properly introducing me. I brushed off his comment, and fortunately he didn’t pursue it…

The neighborhood around the church had changed during the seventeen years he had been pastor there. When he first arrived, he said, the stores along 86th Street were mostly German. You heard German spoken on the street. But not now. You were more likely to hear Spanish than German. The longer we visited, the more comfortable he became. He didn’t mind talking. I practiced listening.

A couple of hours later I left and drove into the city. Driving into the city never failed to thrill me. It didn’t matter which route I took, but the Fifty-Ninth Street bridge was the best. You got onto the bridge through a cobweb of steel that carried the train overhead. The bridge carried you high above the East River, giving you views of the skyline before dropping you onto the congested streets of Manhattan.

I drove up to the church, found a parking place a couple of blocks from the church, parked and walked the neighborhood. It did not have the earthy vitality of Greenwich Village or the Upper West Side. It didn’t have the glitz of Times Square or Rockafeller Center. But it was Manhattan. The sidewalks were full of people. Nanny’s pushing baby carriages. Seventy-year-old women made up with the care of a twenty-year old headed to a dance. Men in suits, walking with brisk determination. Everywhere the streets were constricted with the double-parked service vans of plumbers, carpenters, delivery men, electricians, elevator repairmen and dry cleaners. Yellow taxis threaded their way through and blared their horns. It felt like home.

I walked the couple of blocks west from the church to Central Park. The trees were fresh with the new leaves of summer. People were everywhere. Joggers filled the path around the reservoir. Ten blocks north I left the park at 96th Street. Ninety-sixth street on the east side was one of the most jarring boundaries in New York. South of 96th was my neighborhood, York Town, the Upper East Side, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in New York. Little, old white women walked the sidewalks, dressed and made up or pulling little grocery carts. The only people of color were maids and nannies and uniformed doormen.

North of 96th was Harlem. There were no fences separating the two neighborhoods, no physical barriers, but the might as well have been the an international boundary. The contrast between north of 96th and south of 96th was easily as stark as the difference between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez or San Diego and Tijuana. I couldn’t help wondering if Jesus would have preferred working north of the border.

My first Sabbath morning in New York three weeks later, the congregation looked pretty much the same as it had five years earlier. About forty people in a building that could seat 400. Eighty percent of them Germans over sixty-five. There were a couple of younger Germans. A Romanian woman and her three children who lived in the tiny apartment at the back of the church. She served as sexton. The Gardeners. John Benedetto.

Emily was there, parked in a chair by the front door after church, waiting for the Pauliens to fetch their car to take her home. She was as ebullient as ever, loudly greeting everyone. And Edith. A retired fashion designer. Elegant and gracious.

Coming out of seminary, my opinions about how to achieve optimal church function were sharply defined. I had read the books and fed off the zeal of other dreamers. I was going to be God’s spokesman, God’s designated leader, moving people toward high ideals. I had mastered the entire complex of Adventist theology, both the formal statements of belief and the vast library of traditional prophetic scenarios, biblical interpretation, behavioral and liturgical mores. I was eager to teach my version of classic Adventism. I knew what to do and what to say to revolutionize the life of the church.

But it didn’t take long in Babylon to reduce me to a student again, learning from people without titles. The saints in Babylon never challenged my theological ideas, they simply modeled effective Christian spirituality in the context of their prosaic suburban lives (though, of course, they never used the word, “spirituality”). They weren’t perfect Adventists. Rachel hardly ever attended church. Sam drank coffee. The Jeffersons went to movies. Mabel ate meat. Hans’ temper made life difficult for his wife. Wilson was having anonymous sex with men at a rest area on the Long Island Expressway. Mr. Smith was blatantly racist. The fat couple with the bulldog were eating themselves to death. But the sum of their life together was greater than their individual characters. Together they had created a generous, gentle community that was largely color-blind, hopeful, forgiving, gracious. Their lives together reduced many traditional theological certainties to merely curious addenda to the truth of community.

Now I was in Manhattan, a place where preaching would be the big deal. New York preachers had influenced the world–Harry Emerson Fosdick, George Buttrick, Dave Wilkerson. Finally, I was going to be a preacher. My words were going to matter.

Delusions of grandeur die hard.

God, Rocks, and Souls

This is an introduction to John McLarty’s book in progress, GOD, ROCKS, AND SOULS, a memoir of an “old, white, liberal Adventist pastor”.

What follows is a “chapter…not in its final form” from that book in progress.http://godrocksandsouls.blogspot.com/

Chapter 48. Ordination Exam: Part 2

Elder Kretschmar talked a bit more about how important it was to protect the church's official teachings regarding tithe. Then, he gently moved us away from the explosive issues tithe policy to the safer ground of tithe income. “We can’t settle here whether you have to remove someone from office in your local church because they don’t give all their tithe through the tithe fund. That’s an issue you will have to decide in consultation with your congregation. I do think it is important that ministers bear a strong testimony in support of what the church teaches about returning God’s tithe. We can’t have every member thinking they have the same prerogatives as a prophet. We need to teach our members to return their tithe to God's storehouse through their local church. By the way, John, I’ve noticed tithe giving in your church has increased quite a bit during the years you’ve been there, so obviously you support the teaching of the church.

“Elder Murray, do you have a question?”

“John, I want to know whether you support church standards. In today’s world there is so much permissiveness, so much laxity and carelessness in the things of God. Our young people, especially in the city, need clear, firm guidance. So brother, as you prepare for the sacred rite of ordination, tell us, do you support church standards?”

“I would if I knew what they were.” I felt bad saying this. James was tossing me an easy pitch. His entire demeanor was an invitation to answer yes and we would move on. “Church standards” was Adventist code for the detailed behavioral rules of our community. They could see my wife wore no make up and that neither of us wore a wedding ring. I was somewhat notorious for publicly advocating the special health rules of Adventism–I was a vegetarian and a runner. I didn’t go to movies or dance. We didn’t go out to eat on Sabbath. I believed in “church standards” and advocated them. I could have answered with a simple, yes. It would have been true and in keeping with the spirit of the questioner, but I had vowed to be totally transparent. Hence my comment.

"What do you mean, ‘you would support church standards if you knew what they were?’” James asked.

“Just two months ago,” I said, “we elected a new youth leader for our church. All the kids like her, but she wears a lot of make up and huge earrings and flashy necklaces. So I went to see her. I told her I wasn’t there to try and convince her that wearing jewelry was wrong. However, it was important for people in leadership to uphold the standards of the church. I could see Patricia wasn’t overly impressed with my words so I pulled out a copy of our 27 Fundamental Beliefs and showed her section 21. She took it from me and read it, then looked up and said, 'It doesn’t say anything here about jewelry.’

“I didn't believe her, of course. So I took the paper back and read for myself. And reread it. She was right! It doesn’t say a word about jewelry. Not one word. Talk about feeling stupid! Here I am, a minister, and I don’t know what our own official doctrines say. Adventists don’t wear jewelry. I’ve been told since I was old enough to understand English. But the Fundamental Beliefs of our church does say anything about it. Not one word.”

The place erupted. They were interrupting each other as they contradicted me. “Now, John, that can’t possibly be true. Of course, it’s there.” That was Elder Kretschmar. The others were equally adamant that our official statement of beliefs required Christians to avoid drawing attention to themselves by wearing jewelry and ostentatious make up.

“I’ve been a minister for thirty-five years.” The Union ministerial guy said. “I know what we believe. And we believe that wearing jewelry is contrary to God’s ideal for his people.”

“I’m not saying I don’t believe in modesty and humility in dress.” I said. “I don’t wear jewelry. My wife doesn’t wear jewelry. We don't even wear wedding rings. But I’m telling you, the Statement of Beliefs does not mention jewelry. It’s not there. And it doesn’t mention movies either. Some of my leaders regularly go to the movies. You all 'know' they are not supposed to. I 'know’ they’re not supposed to. But the Statement of Beliefs does not back me up.”

“John, I think you need to go back and reread the Statement of Beliefs.” This was Elder Kretschmar again. “We all know what our church believes when it comes to standards. Seventh-day Adventists don’t believe in wearing jewelry and going to movies. That’s what we teach our young people. It’s what we expect of our mature members.”

“I’m not arguing about what we believe,” I said. “I’m arguing about what our official statement of beliefs says we believe. If I’m going to 'support’ church standards, I can’t expect people to just accept what I say. I have to be able to show them what the church has voted. I need to be able to show them something official. Obviously the Bible doesn’t say, 'Thou shalt not go to movies.’ Or 'Thou shalt not wear earrings.’

“It must be there.” Elder Gonzalez’ voice was the first gentle entry into the debate. “John, I think you’re not remembering correctly. Surely our church included these standards in our Statement of Beliefs. I don’t see how these things could be missing from the 27.”

“I thought the same thing, Elder Gonzalez. I was positive they were there. But they aren’t. Neither jewelry nor movies are mentioned.” I started to get up from my chair. “If you’ll wait just a minute, I’ll run out to my car and get a copy of the 27 from my briefcase in the car.”

Elder Kretschmar stopped me. “Sit down, John. We don’t need to read the Statement of Beliefs. We know that you and Karin order your lives according to traditional standards of the church. And I’m sure you will find a way to teach your members to practice modesty in their dress and carefulness in their entertainment.

“Karin, let me ask you a question. How do you feel about being a minister’s wife? It can be most rewarding. It can also be challenging. Tell us how you see your role in the ministry.”

“John is the one called to the ministry, not me. But he is my husband and I support him in the work God has called him to. I help out where I can. In the Babylon Church I work in the children’s Sabbath School and I’m part of a women’s Bible Study group. Sometimes I play the organ. I do whatever I can to be helpful.”

“How do you handle it when church members have a conflict with your husband?”

“I figure that’s John’s department. There’s been obviously been some conflict, especially in Babylon. But I don’t cause the conflict, and I can’t resolve it. I figure the best thing for me to do is leave John to address those issues.”

Before Elder Kretschmar could think of another question for Karin, Elder Smith spoke up. “John, in every organization you have to have a boss. You have to have someone who has the responsibility for overall direction of the work. And we need to respect that leadership role. Part of respecting that leadership is taking advice and counsel. I want to know if you’ll take counsel.”

[Note to reader: “Take counsel” was a technical term in Adventist clergy circles. It was the label for proper deference to the church hierarchy as a system and to all the persons above you in that hierarchy.]

“That’s a good question. But I don’t know how to answer it. I’m pretty hardheaded. . . . As I think most of you know.” Most of them laughed.

“Maybe I should clarify just a bit,” Elder Smith said. “I’m not talking about moral issues. I recognize there are times when you’ve got to take a stand, when it’s a matter of right and wrong. When it’s a moral issue, you’ve got to follow your conscience no matter what anyone says. But I’m talking about when the president gives you counsel about some course of action that does not involve a moral issue, when it’s a matter of judgment. Will you take counsel in that kind of situation?”

I didn’t answer immediately. What should I say? The right answer was obvious. I could feel Elder Smith setting me up for the right answer. It was another friendly pitch. He was praying I would hit it out of the park. But would I really take counsel and advice? Sure, sometimes I would. No, most of the time I would. But it seemed to me that if I gave a simple yes to his question, I would be agreeing with the authoritarian model of church leadership that Elder Smith held. I knew I viewed church hierarchy in a radically different way. I did not share Elder Smith's deference toward authority. “I think I better stick with my first answer. I would certainly listen, but would I take counsel? I don’t know.”

There were a few more questions. We had gone way over time. There was another candidate waiting. Elder Kretschmar asked Elder Prestol to close with prayer. Karin and I left. She was appalled by some of my answers, but the words were out there. I had placed the dilemma of my fitness for ordination squarely in their hands, except for my questions about geochronology. They hadn’t asked about that.

The next day Elder Kretschmar called to tell me the committee had voted to ordain me. I learned later the sole dissenting vote had been Elder Schmidt, the Union minister.

*Ingathering was a fund-raising program in which members were expected to solicit donations from the public for disaster relief and other humanitarian activities by the church. Every congregation was assigned a fund-raising goal based on their membership. Over the years it had become the tail that wagged the dog. Ministers could find themselves out of a job if their congregations failed to raise the expected amounts. Unfortunately, the internal controls on the management of Ingathering funds were so loose the church could not (or would not) give any report on how the monies were spent.

*The Davenport scandal: An Adventist business man offered church administrators fantastically generous returns on their own personal investments in return for their steering church monies into his investment vehicles which turned out to be pyramid schemes.

Book Review: Surprised by Oxford

I was pleasantly surprised by Carolyn Weber's memoir Surprised by Oxford. I enjoyed it to such a degree that I had to keep reading. Carolyn, who comes from a loving but broken home and is highly averse to religion, heads to Oxford to study literature. While there, she meets all sorts of wonderful (and not so wonderful) people, engages in conversation, and is challenged by what she learns about Christianity from a friend who breaks the stereotypes she has held about believers.

The writing is a bit disjointed at times but the author uses language beautifully and describes Oxford University in ways which made me want to study there. She also shares her gradual and subtle journey from agnosticism towards Christianity. This journey sometimes includes a few cliched responses to questions that are issues for Christians but, on the whole, does not dominate the narrative.

To begin with, I wondered whether my interest could be sustained for over 400 daunting pages. But it was. With evocative descriptions of Oxford, reference to classical writers and poets, delightful turns of phrases, a bit of romance, it makes for a genuinely fresh reading experience. It's the sort of book you can relax with and be carried along on a gentle journey of delightfully meditative reflections. Beautifully honest and insightful.

Click here to learn more at Amazon: Surprised by Oxford: A Memoir

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

God, Rocks, and Souls

This is an introduction to John McLarty’s book in progress, GOD, ROCKS, AND SOULS, a memoir of an “old, white, liberal Adventist pastor”.

What follows is a “chapter…not in its final form” from that book in progress.http://godrocksandsouls.blogspot.com/

Chapter 48. Ordination Exam: Part 1

In spring of 1983 Elder Kretschmar called and invited Karin and me to meet with the ordination committee. I was excited–and troubled.

Ordained ministers are the guardians of the church, the guarantors of continuity, stability and orthodoxy. I had a hard time seeing myself in that role. I more often saw myself as an iconoclast, a reformer, a gadfly. How could I pledge unreserved allegiance to the church organization given what I thought about Ingathering*, the Davenport scandal*, the sometimes irrational emphasis on evangelism as the only reason for the church's existence, the institutional racism, the culture of moral and administrative incompetence? I loved the church. It was my family. I found its theology a wonderful resource for thinking. But could I really devote my entire adult life to promoting the institutional church? Was accepting ordination hypocritical? Did it suggest a kind of agreement that I could not, in good conscience, give?

I considered canceling my appointment with the ordination committee. Perhaps I could postpone the whole thing for a year. But what would be the point? I didn’t have any fewer questions now than I had the year before or the year before that. The questions never went away. And then there was the matter of my calling. I sometimes wondered if God existed. Atheism seemed a reasonable alternative to belief. But I could not shake the sense of call. It had hounded me for thirteen years. I had broken up with more than one girlfriend because of my call. I had not pursued a career in science because of the call. If God had called me, then making a deliberate choice to avoid ordination would be an affront to God. But how could it be right to accept a title under false pretenses?

After stewing over this for a week or two, I finally decided to appear before the committee and simply present myself as transparently as I could. If, with full knowledge of who I was, they still decided to ordain me, then I would accept it as God’s will. It would be a hopeful sign of openness in the church.

From what I had heard, with some guys the ordination committee merely went through the motions. They asked a few questions, received the answers they expected and moved on the next candidate. Other candidates told of intense grilling about everything from the guy’s theology to his marriage to his eating habits. Some candidates I knew were put on formal probation after their interviews and given a year to make improvements. The pastor who interviewed before me came out of the room smiling and relaxed. It was a good sign.

A few minutes after he left, Elder Kretschmar invited Karin and me into the committee room. There were seven on the committee. The president, vice-president and treasurer of the conference, several pastors–Israel Gonzalez, a sweet, gentle pastor I greatly admired; the pastor of the Old Westbury Church, John Smith, a Midwestern good old boy without a seminary education, James Murray, the flamboyant pastor of a large, rapidly-growing Jamaican church in the Bronx. Also present was Elder Kurt Schmidt, the ministerial director of the Atlantic Union (the denomination's administrative unit for the Northeastern USA).

“I believe you know everyone here.” Elder Kretschmar said to me, once we had taken our seats. “Have you met Elder Schmidt, our Union ministerial director?”

I nodded to Elder Schmidt. I didn’t know him personally. His body language made me wary.

“John,” Elder Kretschmar continued, “you have done good work in this conference over the past three years. We’ve appreciated your commitment and hard work. But the work of the gospel ministry is a high and exalted calling. Ordination is a formal recognition by the church that God has called you to serve his church by preaching the gospel and winning souls. It is our responsibility to make close inquiry of those we are considering for ordination. Thanks for being here. Let’s begin with prayer.”

After prayer the questioning began. Elder Kretschmar was first.

“John, tell us about your call to the ministry.”

I told them my story–my plans to be a doctor, the irresistible sense of calling to ministry, my final yielding to the call and subsequent certainty. They liked the story.

“John, many young ministers have been greatly unsettled by the controversies surrounding Dr. Ford. Do you have confidence in the doctrines of the Adventist Church?

“While I was in seminary and in the year or two immediately following graduation, a number of my friends left the church because they no longer believed the Adventist interpretation of the judgment and our teaching about 1844. When I talked with them, I realized that all of their reading, one hundred percent of it, was in literature that was critical of the church’s position. So naturally they were persuaded by the critics. I decided to go back and read what the founders of the church had written. I read books by James White and Loughborough and Andrews. When I looked at the Bible passages through their eyes, it made sense. I saw how they derived their views from the Bible. In addition, the Adventist concept of the Great Controversy–the idea that God is unwilling to “get on with eternity” until he has responded to every human question–I don’t see that kind of respect for human intellect in any other Christian theology. It helps me live with my own unanswered questions. And our rejection of eternal hellfire–wow, that is incredibly helpful in sharing Jesus with people who are not Christians.

“So do I have confidence in the doctrines of the Adventist Church? Yes.”

I could sense the social warmth in the room. These guys, except for the Union minister, were my friends. They knew me. They wanted to ordain me. They were going to do their due diligence. They were going to ask real questions, but they weren’t out to get me.

“What about the Spirit of Prophecy? Do you believe Ellen White was inspired by God?” This was from Elder Gonzalez.

“That’s an easy one. Sure. It seems to me in the Bible the dominant role of prophets is to rebuke people, to challenge the status quo, to unsettle people. Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Amos, Ezekiel–all were famous for their stern calls for repentance. Mrs. White certainly gave plenty of rebukes–both to individuals and to leaders. And we see the fruit of her work in our hospitals, schools, healthy life style and the world-wide distribution of the church. So yes, I believe she was inspired.”

Everyone around the circle was smiling and nodding as I talked. I continued. “But I do think we need to be careful about context and setting. Some of our members use Ellen White like a club to hit each other and visitors over the head. In Sabbath School class these folks quote Mrs. White instead of the Bible. I think we need to be careful about that.”

Elder Gonzalez agreed. “Yes, we are all aware of those challenges in our congregations. We do have a responsibility to help our members to use the Spirit of Prophecy in the right way, as the lesser light pointing to the greater light.” The mood didn’t change. They continued nodding and smiling.

Then the minister from the Union took his turn. “John, I want to ask you about tithe. I have three questions for you: Do you believe it? Do you practice it? Do you teach it?”

“That’s easy,” I said. “Yes, definitely.” I paused a long moment, then added, “But if I were you I would ask more than that.”

He was visibly taken aback, but he didn’t hesitate more than a couple of seconds. “Okay, so I’m asking. What else do you have to tell us?”

“I know some pastors will not allow any one to hold a church office if that person does not contribute ten percent of their income to the church through the regular tithe fund. I have someone in my church who dedicates ten percent of his income to God, but he does not contribute all of it to the tithe fund. He uses some of it for various charitable purposes. I have told him this is against the policy of the church, but I cannot, in good faith, tell him that what he is doing is contrary to what the Bible teaches. He’s a leader in our church and I see no reason to press the issue beyond informing him of the voted policy of the denomination.”

I could see emotion rising in Elder Schmidt’s face. I had assaulted a sacred cow. “Our tithing system was established under divine guidance. It provides the financial support for our world-wide church. This tithe system enables us to maintain missionaries in over two hundred countries around the world even though we are a small church. If you weaken the tithe system, if you allow members to do what they think is best with their tithe dollars, it would cripple our ability to fulfill our divine commission to take the Third Angel’s Message to the whole world.”

“I understand your point.” I said. “But how can I show from the Bible that the only way to fulfill your obligations to God is to put a tenth of your income in a tithe envelope and give it at church? I know someone who is wealthy. He gives his tithe once a year. And he always gives it as tithe, but he doesn’t always give it through his own local church. Sometimes he sends it directly overseas to a mission field. Is that wrong?”

“Yes.” Elder Schmidt insisted. “The only right way to manage your tithe is to give it to the tithe fund through the local church where you are a member. Anything else is wrong.”

“But can you show me how to prove that from the Bible?

“The Bible in Malachi says that we are bring all the tithe into the store house. That means we should give our tithe through the local church.”

“Wait a minute. If we use that text as the rule, then every church member in the world should send their tithe to the General Conference. This text does not say ‘store houses.’ It mentions only one storehouse which was the temple in Jerusalem. We have four thousand congregations in North America and fifty conferences. They all accept tithe. So how can I use Malachi’s words about a single storehouse to prove anything to my church member?

“And what about Ellen White? She didn’t always give her tithe through the regular church process. When she thought the church was underfunding some particular ministry–especially her son’s ministry to Blacks in the South–she gave her tithe directly to him and didn’t make a secret of it.”

“What do you mean?” Elder Schmidt demanded. “Are you telling me Ellen White diverted tithe money? Where did you hear that?”

“Elder Schmidt, it’s common knowledge.” I answered. “I read her statements defending her practice in the Ellen White Research Room at the seminary. All of her 'irregular' gifts of tithe money that I remember reading about were to support either the work of her son Edson who was working among the Blacks in the South or to Black ministers in the South who were grossly underpaid.”

I could see Elder Schmidt was upset. He couldn't concede my point, but others in the room were nodding in acknowledgment of what I was saying. So contradicting my statement of historical fact might show his ignorance. If Ellen White had actually done what I said she had, it gave the question a twist he had never thought about. He was stuck. Elder Kretschmar came to the rescue.

“John, we can’t use Ellen White’s personal behavior as an example for us in every instance. She was prophet. She had special guidance from God. If all our members were to give their tithe wherever they felt like, how would we pay the salaries of the ministers? How would we support our schools?” (I smiled inwardly at Elder Kretschmar's defense of church policy. A year earlier he had helped me arrange for “special” receipting of $40,000 of tithe funds from a donor in another part of the country. If the money had been officially received as tithe, the conference would have been obligated to pass on thirty percent or more to higher levels of the church organization. Instead, through creative receipting, the entire $40,000 was kept locally and used to hire an assistant pastor for the Huntington Church.)

(to be continued)

God, Rocks, and Souls

This is an introduction to John McLarty’s book in progress, GOD, ROCKS, AND SOULS, a memoir of an “old, white, liberal Adventist pastor”.

What follows is a “chapter…not in its final form” from that book in progress.http://godrocksandsouls.blogspot.com/

Chapter 52. Emily

Elaine may have had the most dangerous face in the church, but she was hardly the only woman to unsettle me.

I had met Emily my first Sabbath at the German Church. She was parked in a metal folding chair in the tiny lobby of the church, waiting for the Pauliens to get their car and drive her home.

I was fresh out of seminary, employed by Metro Ministries at the New York Center in Times Square, and quasi-officially assigned as assistant pastor at the German New York Seventh-day Adventist Church on Manhattan’s upper east side. I was an easy mark, a brand new pastor eager to do pastoral work. Emily wanted attention. My third week at church, she invited me for supper.

Her apartment was on the second floor of a dilapidated, six-floor walk up on East 85th near Third Avenue. When she opened the door, I looked over her head into what had been a sitting room. The furniture was piled with nondescript stuff, barely visible in the dark. She greeted me with her characteristic cackling laugh. “Ach, mein liebling, come in, come in.” She pulled me down and gave me a wet kiss on the cheek. Then, hobbling on her walker, she headed into the kitchen.

The glare of the light bulb hanging in the center of the room highlighted the water stains on the ceiling and upper wall on the far side of the room. Below the stains was a grimy window, too deep in the window well between buildings for sunlight to reach even if it had been clean. Every horizontal surface was piled with empty plastic containers, pots and pans and papers, especially papers. The yellow linoleum-topped kitchen table was completely buried. Where the table abutted the corner, the drift of church papers, boxes, empty containers, expired coupons for cat food, canning lids and letters approached eighteen inches deep.

When it was time to eat, Emily cleared two spaces on the table for plates and served us from the stove. She asked me to say grace and we ate. The dishes were cracked and stained, but not visibly dirty. The spaetzle and boiled cabbage was edible. For dessert, she served a berry-filled pastry with ersatz coffee made from grain.

Supper over, she had a favor to ask. She had a small house upstate. She had bought it with her husband Albert. They used to have such wonderful times there. Could I possibly drive her up to the house sometime? She would pay for gas. The teenager she had hired in the past had moved.

What could I say?

She talked about her Albertli. And laughed and cried. “Ach, mein Albert!” And her eyes glowed with distant, dreamy fire.

The next Sunday, I pulled into 85th Street hoping to find a parking place near Emily’s apartment. But this was Manhattan on Sunday morning. Across the street was a fire station. No parking there. Next to the fire station, on the corner of Third Avenue was a luxury high rise. No parking anytime in front of it. The rest of the street was parked bumper to bumper except for the fire hydrants. I drove around the block a couple of times. Finally, I doubled parked in front of Emily’s building. She buzzed me in and I raced up the stairs.

She was at the door. Before she shut it behind her, she talked to her two cats. “I’ll be gone for a few hours my dears. Don’t worry. I’ll be back. I’ll get your dinner. Don’t worry.”

She turned, “Ach. How are you?” she giggled. “Come here, let me give you a kiss.”

“We need to hurry.” I said. “I’m double parked.”

“Oh! That’s bad.” her face a storm of indignation and worry.

She gave me her cane and put both hands on the railing. Then lowered herself one step at a time. Every step, I worried about my double-parked car. But I was amazed to watch her negotiate the steps. She was less than five feet tall and appeared to be three feet wide.

Finally, we were on the ground floor. Then out the door, down the front steps. No ticket. Whew!

She called to a couple of firemen outside the station across the street. “This is my pastor,” she called. “We are going to my house in the country.” They waved. I helped her into my gold, 1974 Volkswagen Beetle with sunroof and stereo.

As we drove north, she told me more about Albertli. She had fallen in love with him when she was ten years old. He was seventeen. She followed him everywhere in the small agricultural village where they lived. She had made him promise he would wait for her to grow up so she could marry him. That was before the war.

Then the war came. She lost track of everyone in the village, and after the war ended up in New York City by herself. She found work as a polisher in the diamond district in midtown Manhattan. Her boss always said he appreciated her work. And he was nice to her. But he refused to pay her what she was worth. Once she worked on the Hope Diamond. The guards had orders not to let it out of their sight. They hovered over her until she demanded they get out or she wouldn’t work. They stood against the back wall. She loved telling that story.

Then when she was fifty, she got on the Lexington Avenue local at 86th Street headed to work. The train stopped at 77th Street, and Albert got on the train! She stared. It couldn’t be. Finally, he noticed her staring. He looked again. He came over.

“Are you Emily?”

She said nothing. She giggled. She couldn’t stop looking at him. Then she threw her arms around him.

He met her after work that evening, and they talked half the night. And the next night and the next. During her days at work she struggled to persuade herself it wasn’t a dream. Her Albert! He had married during the war. But after they moved to New York, his wife died. So he hadn’t exactly waited, but here he was, hers. He started coming to church with her. Eventually, he joined the church and they married. Nineteen years of pure bliss.

The small, two-storey frame house was on a corner. A detached garage was back of the house on the right. Albert and Emily used to come up every weekend during the summer. There was a large garden, grassed over now, but still fenced, where they had grown food for themselves and the raccoons, deer, skunks and squirrels. Albert had an uncanny way with animals. Once they found a skunk in the basement. He had walked downstairs, picked it up by the tail and carried it outside where he set it down gently. It never sprayed. Albert talked with the deer. He made friends with a raccoon that visited at the back door frequently.

She wiped tears as she talked about those days. After Albert died, she couldn’t get up here very often. She kept their car for awhile, but after a few years, she had so much trouble with her leg, she couldn’t drive any more. Their house in the country was too far from the doctor, bank and store to manage without a car. So she had to move back to an apartment in the city.

I mowed the lawn. That was the real reason for our trip. For lunch we had sandwiches she had brought, and she opened a jar of blueberries she had canned. I couldn’t tell how old the jar was. The berries were dark. The jar was half juice. But it didn’t taste too bad.

We went another time or two that summer. I had thought I might use my time with Emily to help me learn German. I figured learning a bit of the language would show respect for the congregation’s heritage. But other Germans at the church cautioned me not to learn German from Emily. Her German was “redneck German,” they explained. Emily’s English was none too polished either, but her voice danced with laughter and mischief and life. She was loud and half deaf and irrepressible.

I left Manhattan for four years to pastor on Long Island before returning to the German Church as their official pastor. When I returned, she was delighted to see me and I her. During my years away, Emily had sold her house in the country. I was glad not to have to figure out whether it was my duty to help her get her lawn mowed, but I winced to hear the story of the sale. She had been badly taken advantage of.

A couple of months after my return to the city, I got a call. Emily was in the hospital. When I visited her, she asked me in a conspiratorial voice to help her escape. She had to get back home to take care of her cats. I tried to explain she wasn’t strong enough to return home. But I would check on the cats.

She was in the hospital as a result of a mugging. A couple of teenage girls had jumped her in the hall just outside the door of her apartment. They grabbed her purse, then shoved her down the stairs. She broke her right arm and right leg in several places. Her ribs hurt.

It took effort to restrain my rage, looking at her trussed up in that bed and listening to her plaintive question, “Why did they do that?” What could I say?

Every time I visited her in the hospital, she would ask in her comic, pouty voice, “When can I go home? Why won’t they let me go home? Can’t you sneak me out of here? I’ll pay you.”

I would mumble something. At eighty-two, given her weight and her injuries, I couldn’t see how she would ever get back on her feet. But I couldn’t bring myself to say so.

Then I visited her in her new place, a room on the fourth floor of the Metropolitan Nursing Home on 98th Street. Her roommate, Lucy, appeared to be mildly retarded, but she was fully ambulatory and waited on Emily hand and foot. Lucy would smile at me shyly when I greeted her. She would let me hug her, but she never looked up, never looked me squarely in the face. She would nod her head when I asked her a question, but she didn’t talk. She seemed lost and disoriented.

Emily talked. About Albert. About animals. About people back in her neighborhood. About the firemen across the street and the garbage men and the guy who ran the fruit and vegetable store around the corner on Third Avenue. About the nasty people who lived in this nursing home with her. About mean staff.

On one of my visits we were sitting in her room. Emily was carrying on with her usual raucous banter when suddenly she turned sober.

“John, I have a question.”

“Yes.”

“You know my Albertli?”

“Yes.”

“You know I fell in love with him when I was ten years old, and then didn’t see him again for forty years until we met on the subway?”

“Yes, I remember.”

She lowered her voice and looked at the floor. She looked up at me again, then back at the floor. “Do you think Jesus can forgive me?”

“Sure, Emily. But what are you talking about?”

“My Albert and me. We were so crazy in love, we couldn’t wait. We couldn’t wait till we were married. I had waited forty years. He had to take Bible studies and join the church before we could get married. It took too much time. And we couldn’t wait.” She paused.

“I asked Jesus to forgive me.”

She paused again, a long time for Emily.

“It was a miracle. After forty years. Do you think Jesus can forgive me?”

“Emily, look at me.”

She looked up. Her face a crumpled mixture of tears and remembered delight.

“I’m sure Jesus has forgiven you.”

“You think so?” She grinned at me, then she was no longer looking at me, she was dreaming again of Albert, her Albertli. A minute later she reached over, tugged me toward her and opened her arms. We hugged and she kissed me, a wet kiss on my cheek.

I didn’t visit Emily as often as I should. It was painful. What do you say to someone who has been fiercely independent her whole life, who loves trees and sunshine and flowers and sky . . . and now lives on the fourth floor of an ugly institution, with no window in her room. Her only escape from her room a wheel chair which Lucy would push down to the day room.

The day room was brighter than her room, but still sterile. And noisy in unhappy ways with the blaring TV and quarreling residents.

On one of my visits, Emily showed me red marks on her wrists. That was where the woman grabbed her she said.

“Who?”

“The nurse. She pulls me out of bed at two in the morning and makes me go take a shower. Why can’t they let me take a shower in the day time? Why do they have to wake me up at night and scream at me?”

She sounded like a lost little girl who needed Daddy or big brother to protect her. But I didn’t know how. Back then I didn’t know about elder abuse. I didn’t know if what she was telling me really happened. I didn’t know how to find out. Was she messing her bed at night and only remembering the efforts to clean her up? Was someone deliberately targeting her for mistreatment? I couldn’t ask Lucy. If I complained to the management, might it make things even worse for Emily? I felt helpless.

The next time I visited Emily, she was in the day room when I arrived. She asked me to wheel her down to her room so we could talk without all the distractions.

“How are you?” She asked in her characteristic loud, sweet-talking voice. I never tired of hearing Emily talk. Her German might be crude. Her entire demeanor evinced a cheerful disregard for niceties and proper manners. But her voice bubbled with laughter, affection and life.

“I’m fine,” I said. “How are you.” It seemed impolite to even ask. What could she say? She was in prison for no crime of her own.

“Come,” she motioned. “Sit down.”

I sat directly in front of her beside the small round table in her end of the room. She dropped her head then covered her face with her hands and began to cry softly.

I let her cry for a minute, then asked. “What is it, Emily? What did they do to you now?”

She didn’t answer at first. She just shook her head. Then she looked up at me, trying to force a smile through her tears. “To think they did worse than that to my Jesus.”

“What do you mean, Emily?”

“You know. Last night when they got me up for my shower at two in the morning, the lady slapped me. Why did she do that? But they did much worse to my Jesus. They slapped him and pulled his beard and beat him.”

She buried her face in her hands again and cried silently for her Jesus.

I wondered what kind of saint I was sitting with. A nurses aid was pulling her out of bed at two in the morning. Yanking her around and slapping her, and Emily was crying for her Jesus. They slapped him worse.

I preached Emily’s graveside service in February. There was slushy snow on the ground. Her nephew and his wife and their two sons were there. The Paulien’s came and brought two other old German women from church. The Feyls, another old German couple from church, came. I talked about Emily’s love for animals and for firemen and the garbage men on her block and for the kids in her apartment building. I talked about the promise of resurrection. I didn’t know how to talk about her crying for Jesus, so I didn’t.

I hope Jesus will forgive me.

God, Rocks, and Souls

The address that follows is an introduction to John McLarty’s book in progress, GOD, ROCKS, AND SOULS, a memoir of an “old, white, liberal Adventist pastor”.

What follows is a “chapter…not in its final form” from that book in progress. http://godrocksandsouls.blogspot.com/

Chapter 51. A Curmudgeon and a Queen

Remembering Kurt Paulien’s complaint that I had not attended board meetings during my earlier connection with the church, I didn’t wait for Elder Roehn to schedule meetings. Every week, I asked him if he wanted to get together. Most weeks he said yes. We’d visit at his home or at the church. There was no particular structure to our meetings. He gave me no assignments. We talked theology and church politics, pastoring and people. In these conversations, I learned something of the personal history of my new teacher. During WWII, he served in the German Navy and he retained a secret admiration for the effectiveness of Hitler’s political and military apparatus. Hitler may have done some bad things, but he had his good points, too. Herb ended up in the pastorate by accident, having never finished college, much less seminary.

Given Herb’s history and his reputation as a bullying, abrasive pastor I didn’t expect to learn much. My job was to humor him, to help him end his career with some measure of grace. I was prepared to grant him this: he was clearly my superior when it came to knowledge of cars, especially German cars. Already, back when I had been his unofficial (and unrecognized and unappreciated) assistant, I had benefited from his freely-offered and smart guidance when my Volkswagen was balky.

Our conversations uncovered huge contradictions–contradictions that also came to light in stories church members told me. Elder Roehn's crusty, abrupt manner was layered over a fierce compassion.

Frieda Feyl told me that once when a church member had been sick, Herb had called her up and told her that since she was head deaconness, it was her duty to nurse this woman. He didn’t ask. He ordered. That was his way. So she did it. She wasn’t happy with the way he treated her, but it was work that had to be done. She had her own full-time job and a husband and two kids to care for. Still before work she went by this woman’s apartment to make sure she had taken her medicine and had food for the day. Then after work she came by again to feed her supper and clean the apartment and give her a bath. This in addition to keeping her own place clean and making sure her husband and kids had food and clean clothes. For months Mrs. Feyl managed on four or five hours of sleep a night. But her patient survived. And the church’s reputation as a community of caregivers was upheld. Listening to her, I heard her resentment at being ordered around by Elder Roehn and a bit of pride that she had managed to do it.

In one of our regular conversations, I asked Herb what to do about panhandlers. I encountered them every day coming out of the subway at 86th Street. Often they came by the church and rang the bell. I felt guilty ignoring the guys on the street and saying no to those who came to the church, but I was sure they would spend anything I gave them on drink. It was something that ate at me when I was in NYC as a student. When I returned after seminary and worked for Metro Ministries, the same issue gnawed at me. I asked Herb what he thought.

“John, stop and think,” he said. “How many of these drunks are likely to end up in heaven?”

“I don’t know," I said. "But even if I did know, how would that help me know whether to give them money or not?”

“Come on John. You do know. The Bible says that drunkards cannot enter heaven. And how many of these guys are going to change? How many of them are going to give up their drinking?”

“Well, if you put it that way, hardly any.”

“So why not give them a dollar or two. Let them spend it on alcohol. They aren’t likely to have any pleasure in the next life so whatever pleasure they have now is all they're going to get. Alcohol is the only pleasure they have in this life. So give them some money and don’t worry about what they are going to do with it. Since they’re going to hell anyway, you might as well help them have a few moments of happiness in this world.”

I was astonished. Herb may have been a curmudgeon, but his heart held surprising reservoirs of kindness. In spite of his crude style and lack of education, he was the teacher. I was the student.

Another time, he talked about a couple of members who lived over in Jersey. Both in their eighties, both widowed. Seldom came to church any more. The trip was too difficult. Herb visited them occasionally. The man lived upstairs and owned the house. She rented an apartment downstairs in his daylight basement.

“What do you think I’m supposed to do?” Herb asked. “I know they’re living together. They ought to get married. But if she gets married she loses her pension because it comes from her late husband. His pension alone won’t pay for the house. Without her money they’d both be on the street or in public housing. Do you think I should bring them up before the church? We could censure them or disfellowship them. What do you think I should do?”

It was a perfect case study for a hypothetical exploration of sexual ethics, except it wasn’t hypothetical. Of course, our church does not believe it is right for men and women to live together outside of marriage. And for good reasons. But I could see no righteous answer to Herb’s question other than the route he had taken–quietly accept their pretense of separate living in a shared house.

* * *

The head elder asked me to preach three times a month. Herb was going to preach once a month in English. I checked with Herb and he acknowledged he was okay with this. I couldn’t tell if he was happy or resentful. Once I began preaching weekly in English, new people showed up occasionally. Mr. Feyl, the deacon, greeted them at the door with a bone-crushing handshake and irresistible warmth. Gertrude Paulien invited them home to New Jersey for amazing dinnerAs after church. She and her husband invited young adults to accompany them to the beach at Coney Island on Sundays. Within months a nucleus of socially-attractive young adults gathered. They became friends of one another and were an instant attraction for any other young adult who walked through the door.

We began dressing up the church. Painted the front door cardinal red to contrast with the gray schist facade of the building. Installed flower boxes around the street trees in front of the church.

Denise’s sister Elaine began attending occasionally with her boyfriend, William. Elaine was achingly beautiful. He was a wonderfully eccentric, brilliant professor at Cooper Union. When he first began accompanying Elaine to church he considered himself an agnostic. Who knew what was beyond the world of observation and sense? But as he got acquainted with other young people at the church, he was taken with our practice of Sabbath keeping. An entire day devoted to the cultivation of spiritual and philosophical life, to reading and conversation. He became an avid Sabbath-keeper. His agnosticism was not at all antagonistic to faith. Quite the contrary. But how could one know about all the certainties promulgated by the church and believers? Sometimes he stopped by the church at nine or ten p.m. on his way home from work. We’d go out for supper. His first glass of wine always loosened him and he would expatiate on some esoteric, abstruse topic. I found him more interesting before the wine, more entertaining afterward.

My relationship with William was complicated by Elaine. Her face was a mesmerizing fusion of stunning beauty and vulnerable neediness. This being New York, it was customary for men and women to greet each other with airy kisses on the cheek. That kind of closeness to Elaine unnerved me. Even talking to her at close range unsettled me. I thrilled to be in her presence, but avoided it because of the thrill. I could not give her the relaxed, warm attention that was my ideal in the pastorate. I thought she, too, seemed uncomfortable in our interactions. I wondered if she sensed my discomfiture at her beauty.

William became more and more involved in the life of the church; Elaine less and less. Several years later, when they were visiting us at our home, Elaine, with the encouragement of William, finally voiced her concern. Why did I avoid her? Why didn’t I reach out to her when she came to church? Why didn’t I make contact with her when she was clearly becoming estranged from the church? It seemed to her my only interest was new people. When someone first showed up at church, I was keen to give them attention. But once they were there, once they weren’t “new people” any longer, I took them for granted. It did not feel good to be ignored by the pastor while watching visitors receive all the attention.

Her criticism stung. I apologized. I thanked her for having the courage to confront me. I acknowledged the truth of her complaint. On Sabbath mornings, I did focus more on visitors than regulars. I promised to give more attention to her, to be her pastor as well as pastor for the visitors. Then taking a big breath, I confessed the truth. I was so unsettled by her beauty that I had not known how to treat her. I wished everything good for her, but had not known how to properly minister to her.

She accepted my words without shock. She laughed just the tiniest bit, but did not let me off the hook. That was my problem, not hers. She needed a pastor not another admirer. And my job was to be her pastor.

Elaine was as unlikely a teacher as Herb. My education cost her. I hoped the instruction was worth her pain.

God, Rocks, and Souls

The address that follows is an introduction to John McLarty’s book in progress, GOD, ROCKS, AND SOULS, a memoir of an “old, white, liberal Adventist pastor”.

What follows is a “chapter…not in its final form” from that book in progress. http://godrocksandsouls.blogspot.com/

Chapter 53 Church of the Advent Hope

My first six months as Elder Roehn's assistant went smoothly enough. I scheduled meetings with him and listened to his stories which he was increasingly happy to share. He never gave me assignments, but I made sure to cast everything I did as a support of his ministry. He was the boss; I was the assistant. It worked. I preached every other week and endured Kurt's simultaneous translation the other weeks.

Then Herb retired and I began preaching every week in English at 11:00 a.m. Herb preached in German at 9:00 a.m. The German language Sabbath-school class continued. It was taught on a rotating basis by several of the German members. A trickle of new people (non-Germans, of course) began showing up for Sabbath school and church.

For the next six months, I continued to devote significant energy to including Elder Roehn. I consulted him on everything. I deliberately worked to make him feel important. And he responded well to my efforts. Then it was time to move on.

First up: a new name. I dreaded the conflict. These people had built this church. They had carried the full financial weight of its support for thirty, forty, even, for some of them, fifty years. It was their church. They were deeply proud of their German heritage, their culture of hard work and disciplined spiritual life. They were the German New York Seventh-day Adventist Church. The Brooklyn German Church had already transitioned to a multi-ethnic congregation. The Swedish, Norwegian and Danish churches were faded memories. Even the Italian Adventist churches no longer had any European ethnic identity. They were the last. With my coming as pastor, they had lost German as the primary language of worship. And now I was going to ask them to change their name?

But the change was essential. In the Yellow Pages we were listed as the German New York Seventh-day Adventist Church. Since German immigration had dried up decades earlier, there was no way we were going to grow a church by appealing to Germans. That meant the name in the phone book needed to appeal to English speakers. But logic seldom controls our emotional response to change.

I played with names that I thought would convey the idea of a warm, open community of friends, a respite from the pressure-cooker environment of the business and cultural world of New York. I toyed with names that included Fellowship or Community. William (husband of “the queen” in chapter 51) argued that “Fellowship” did not convey adequately the dignity of what we aspired to. It was too casual, too undignified for Manhattan. “Community” could imply some kind of cultish environment. I was persuaded. But that didn't leave me any bright ideas.

Then I remembered the words carved in stone over the front door: Haus der Advent Hoffnung, German for House of Advent Hope. Elder Roehn explained to me that in Germany, Adventist congregations, like many other non-Lutheran Protestant groups, had refused to use the word kirche, in their name. Kirche, the German word for church, referred to the state supported Lutheran and Catholic churches. The more radical Protestant groups saw this government connection as a spiritually-corrupting entanglement. These radical Protestant groups used the word “haus” or “house” for their buildings to convey the more spiritual ideal of the church as the family of God in contrast to the Lutheran and Catholic conceptions of the church as an institution in civil society.

“Church of the Advent Hope” was a translation of the German name already carved in gray stone facade of the building. William thought it fit. When I presented the name to the board, I emphasized the fact that this name would achieve twin goals of making us more welcoming to non-German speaking visitors and reminding people of our German heritage. It would be a permanent memorial to the sacrifice and service of the congregation who had built the building and carried forward the Adventist work in this part of New York for decades.

The Germans were not excited, but they agreed.

So we changed our name. Painted the front doors Episcopal red. Built planters around the trees in the front sidewalk and filled them with impatiens. With our red doors, gray stone exterior and formal name, we fit right into our Upper East Side neighborhood.

* * *

My dream was to develop a church that appealed to young adults with an Adventist heritage and to their friends. More specifically, I hoped to reach Anglo and international young people. The natural development of every English-speaking Adventist church in the New York City area was to become a predominantly West Indian congregation. This was a simple fact of demographics given the vibrancy and numerical strength of Adventism in the West Indies the patterns of immigration.

How could we structure our church life so that we especially drew Anglo and international young adults without ever making anyone feel unwelcome? Our approach was to simply focus on doing church exactly the way Anglo young adults would do it if they were not constrained by tradition.

Adventists had deeply ingrained traditions about the flow of meetings on Sabbath. The day at church began with a “song service” at 9:15 a.m. This part of the service was led by a “song leader,” someone with a strong voice and lots of enthusiasm. The Sabbath school program began at 9:30. This included a secretary's report (information about attendance and donation numbers) and a mission story (a report about Adventist foreign missions read from a collection that was distributed by the denomination). There was often a “special feature” which could be almost anything the Sabbath School Superintendent came up with—Bible quizzes, skits, slide shows, guest speakers. Then at 10:00 people went to their classes which were typically small groups. These classes ran until 10:50. There was an intermission before worship which began at 11:00 a.m.

In almost any established congregation deviation from this schedule would have been highly controversial. Graciously, the old Germans allowed us to experiment. We dispensed with all of the program elements of Sabbath School, and started at 10:00 with Sabbath School.

Young adults were thrilled to be able to sleep a little later on Sabbath mornings, and many of them voiced their appreciation for our elimination of the program. It was something they did not miss. the program. On the other hand, Adventists who had grown up in the West Indies were appalled at our innovations. Visitors would ask with a straight face how we could call ourselves an Adventist Church since we didn't start Sabbath School at 9:30.

About this time five young adults showed up. They did not know each other, but they immediately connected. The old Germans welcomed them as they did all guests. But there was a special chemistry among the young people. Over the next few months more young adults came through the doors. Most of them found the warmth of the congregation and the appeal of a community of young Adventists in the heart of the City irresistible. They returned and brought their friends. Within a year or so we were a decidedly young adult congregation.

In addition to Anglos we attracted people from everywhere. We had sizeable groups from Madagascar, Brazil, the Philippines. Individuals from various African countries, a few from European nations, Chinese, Venezuelans. In addition to Adventists who had come to New York from elsewhere, we also drew increasing numbers of New Yorkers who had no Adventist background. A number were not Christian. Still they considered the Church of the Advent Hope their spiritual home.

As we grew, people with Adventist backgrounds would visit for a week or two then ask to have their memberships transferred to our church. Then we would scarcely ever see them again. My impression was that at least some of these people were joining our church simply because of the cache of our location. We were a few feet off Park Avenue in the wealthiest residential section of Manhattan. These folks were not interested in becoming part of the ministry of our church but they liked to be able to claim membership.

I consulted the board and we instituted a congregational policy that was completely outside denominational norms. The only way a person could join our church through transfer was to become a member of one of the Sabbath School classes. They had to attend Sabbath School most weeks for several months before we would consider any request for transfer.

Some visitors were incensed at this departure from denominational tradition. They tried to cite the denominations “Church Manual.” We just smiled and explained we did it differently.

The church board was made up of old Germans and young people, about half and half. The present congregation had not built this church. There was no way we could have funded the purchase or construction of a church in Manhattan. We regarded the church as a trust. We were trustees of this House of Hope, responsible for making sure it lived up to its name.

The church was not democratic. We did not hold elections. The board worked to make sure the church served all the people in the church—Germans, young and single Anglos, families with kids, Brazilians, Africans, and Filipinos. But after a couple of years our congregation included so many cultures and so many regulars who were not Adventist, it seemed impractical to operate in the customary Adventist fashion with quarterly business meetings and an annual nominating committee. How do you explain to people who are in church every week that they are not welcome in a congregation meeting because they have not yet been baptized. But if we did not restrict participation to formal members, you could have people with marginal connections with the church voting on major decisions. It was easier to hide the governing structure and work behind the scenes to be as inclusive as possible

Attendance on Sabbath morning continued to increase. Our Brazilians began holding their own services in Portuguese on Sabbath afternoons. We ran health classes and a prophecy seminar. We endlessly wrestled with the question: how could we meaningfully impact people in our part of the City?

We took pleasure in serving as a sanctuary, as a tranquil, safe place for many. If what people told us was true, we were, in fact, a house of hope.

God, Rocks, and Souls

The address that follows is an introduction to John McLarty’s book in progress, GOD, ROCKS, AND SOULS, a memoir of an “old, white, liberal Adventist pastor”.

What follows is a “chapter…not in its final form” from that book in progress. http://godrocksandsouls.blogspot.com/

Chapter 57 John Benedetto

Early in 1979, John Benedetto wandered into a Bible study I conducted every Wednesday evening at the New York Center, the Adventist Church’s evangelistic center on West 46th Street in Times Square. After coming just a few times, he indicated he would like personal Bible studies.

I was ecstatic. In our community, the typical path for someone who wishes to join our church is to take a course of Bible studies covering the doctrines of the church. At the conclusion of those studies, presuming the student has found the studies persuasive, he or she is baptized and becomes an official member of the church. I was sure John’s intense questions and his wish for private studies was evidence of a serious interest in our church. I was in New York to do evangelism and here was the first validation of my ministry. John wanted to be baptized. John was punctual to our appointments, but I had a hard time covering much ground. I had this whole list of Bible doctrines to cover and had a plan to work our way through them. But every time we met, he'd launch into a long recital of the problems in his life. He seemed far more interested in discussing his personal problems than in having a focused conversation on the authority of Scripture, the details of the Second Coming or Bible guidance on how to pray.

He was having trouble sleeping at night because of acid reflux. He had dandruff and was troubled by his body’s weird odor. He hated his job, but he was too old to quit and get a job anywhere else that would provide him any retirement. He wasn’t getting along with his boy and didn’t really like his son-in-law.

I began to despair of ever covering sufficient formal religious content for me to be able to present John for baptism. Besides he didn’t even really believe in God. He was constantly browsing book stores. When I asked him directly about whether he believed in God, he answered, “I know a lot of smart people do.” He knew the arguments of the critics. He felt them in his soul. And he found belief enormously problematic, but at least he could affirm that he knew a lot of smart people believed in God. So while, he personally found belief problematic, he was not being completely hypocritical to hang around and have conversations about life with religious people. Believers were not crazy. Some of them were really smart.

Over time, I heard more of John’s story.

He'd grown up in the Bronx where in addition to his regular day job, his father served as the sexton for a Baptist church. (In New York most of the churches I knew about had live-in caretakers. It was not prudent to leave a building empty for days at a time.) John liked to tell me, “I grew up in the church.” Sometimes he said that as a declaration of the depth of his acquaintance with Christianity but usually it was a preference to explaining why belief was so difficult.

Over and over John told me of being out in the street playing with the other kids in the neighborhood. About five thirty they’d hear the train pulling into the elevated station. He'd watch the other kids run toward the station to see if their dad had come in on that train. John and his brother would run hide somewhere so they could see if their dad was coming or whether they had a few more minutes to play. If they spotted Dad they stayed hidden until called for supper.

John’s fear of his dad was still palpable forty years later.

“I never knew what my dad would do.” He said. “Once, Frank and I built a club house in the yard behind the church. I don’t remember where we scrounged the wood, but it was a great club house. The other kids loved it. One day Dad came home angry and took and ax and demolished our club house . . . and I was in it!

“One evening we had come in for supper. Frank said something that got Dad mad. Frank was on the other side of the table and Dad couldn’t reach him, so Dad grabbed a kettle of hot spaghetti and dumped in on my head. I could never understand it. I hadn’t done anything. Maybe that’s why have some much trouble with my scalp now, all that hot spaghetti.

“The worst was the time he gave away my dog. I don’t see how he could have done that. That dog was my friend. Dad didn’t like him, though. He didn’t think we should be wasting money on food for a lousy dog.

“One day I came home from school and Buddy wasn’t in the yard. I went around the neighborhood looking and calling. Then my mom told me. ‘Your dad took him to the pound this morning after you left for school. He said he was tired of him.’

“Dad never said a word about it. And we lived in the church!”

Several times John told me the story of his marriage, the way he remembered it. He was nineteen. He could never quite figure out why he'd gotten married, except that he didn't know how not to once he started dating. And the dating hadn't really been his idea. He was set up by his friend. They were both going into the army. His friend had a steady girlfriend and they wanted another couple to do things with so the friend set John up with his wife-to-be. And when his friend got married, so did John.

After he got out of the army he and his wife tried farming in the south near where her folks lived, but they could never quite make ends meet. Finally they had to give it up and move back to New York. J.B. hated leaving the country.

“You know, John,” he told me. “That little farm in Arkansas was the most perfect place on earth. It was quiet. We had a yard and chickens. You’d see the sunset in the summer and see the fireflies and hear the cicadas. But I couldn’t make a living. I couldn’t pay the bills.”

Back in New York, over the next twenty-five years he earned a living working for the subway system, raised a couple of kids and tried to answer the questions of why.

Before I met him, he studied at least a couple years respectively with the Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholics and Mormons. As we continued our “Bible studies” he was still searching, trying to make sense of the pain. Trying to figure how, when you grow in the church, life could turn out so bad. He wanted to believe in God, but could never quite make the leap.

Over the next six months, I talked about Bible doctrines and John talked about life. His cat died. His son-in-law drowned. His hiatus hernia grew worse. He took to sleeping on the couch propped up with pillows because he couldn’t bear to lie flat for very long. He described in great detail all of his stratagems for quitting smoking. He had been trying for several years. He was determined that this was one battle he was going to win. Even though he had been defeated dozens of times.

“I take the cigarettes and soak them in cleaning fluid. Then I dry them out. They taste so foul I can’t stand to inhale, at least not very much.”

Another time he described putting the pack at the bottom of the kitchen garbage can so that when he wanted a cigarette he would have to dig through the trash to get them. And they would smell of garbage as an added inducement to leave them alone. He tried cutting cigarettes in half. He lit them, let them burn a bit then put them out and put them back in the pack because, he said, prelit cigarettes tasted nasty.

He went through the Adventist Five-day Plan to Stop Smoking, the American Cancer Society program, a program offered by the Red Cross. I got a blow-by-blow descriptions of every new effort, every creative strategy.

John was still battling when I was asked to leave Manhattan to become a pastor on Long Island. John still wasn’t baptized. He wasn’t a member of the church. He still had dandruff, body odor and aching questions.

* * *

About three years later, I began coming into Manhattan on Sabbath afternoons to lead an English language Bible study group in the German SDA Church. Within just a few weeks John showed up! I couldn’t believe it!

He was proud to inform me he had quit smoking. It had been over two years since his last cigarette. I was pleased. John was making progress.

Visiting after Bible study a couple of weeks later, John told me he was having trouble sleeping. “No, it’s not because of my hernia. Yea, I still have to sleep on the couch, but it’s my son. He’s AWOL from the Navy. Andy says he isn’t worried. He says they’ll just forget about him. I’ve tried to get him to turn himself in, to try make things right but he won’t hear of it. He says he can’t go back now because they’ll bust him. He’s afraid the Navy might come looking for him at our house. So I never see him. I don’t know what to do.”

What could I say? What did I know about having a son on the lam?

John was being cheated at his job. He worked as a clerk selling tokens for the subway system. At the beginning and end of each shift, the clerks had to reconcile their money and token inventory. Because he was slow at it, his relief would always insist on helping him with the tally at the end of the shift. And he was sure she was ripping him off.

“Why don’t you talk to someone about it, John?”

“It won’t do any good.” He said. “The supervisor is an old friend of hers. In fact, I think she’s maybe his girlfriend. Complaining will only make it worse.”

“Can’t you try doing at least part of the tally before she gets there? Isn’t there someway to get it done so that she doesn’t get her hands on the stuff?”

“I’ve tried everything I can think of. The problem is that my shift is the busiest. And it gets crazy just about the end of my shift. I’ve put in for a different shift, but I don’t have enough seniority yet to get a better shift. I could transfer to a different station maybe, but all the best stations have long waiting lists of people trying to get in who have more seniority.”

I prayed for John. What else could I do? It was hard not to get mad at God, listening to John talk. Where was God while all this was going on.

No wonder the closest John could get to a statement of faith was, “I know a lot of smart people believe in God.”

I became the full time pastor of the German Church and it became The Church of Advent Hope. John was there nearly every Sabbath, leaving immediately after potluck to make his shift selling tokens. I was doing the job I had dreamed of for years, working with people who were wonderfully congenial and supportive. (The former pastor had not yet begun his attacks.) I had healthy, happy kids. And John was slowly being squeezed to death.

His daughter had remarried and bought a house. To buy the house she had borrowed money from John, twenty-six thousand dollars from his retirement fund. Then when he talked to her about repaying it, she just laughed. He was a grandpa, but things had gotten so tense between him and his daughter that he wasn’t really welcome at her house. So his wife spend her time at their daughter’s house, enjoying the grandkids while John wandered the aisles of bookstores and went on shopping sprees for stuff he didn’t need. He had thousands of books in his house. Not that he was planning to read them, but he couldn’t resist a bargain. He bought inexpensive electronics–radios, tape players, clocks, gadgets and gizmos. If it was a bargain he couldn’t resist.

I had visited him several years earlier before I had gone to Long Island. His apartment was unremarkable except for the overpowering smell of the cat box. Now he was too embarrassed to have me come to his house. It was so filled with stuff that there was hardly any floor space left. Just aisles among piles of books, outdated food, electronics and clothes. John tried to describe it to me, but I couldn’t believe it was that bad. When I finally went, it was.

The lady who had been ripping him off at work moved to another position. Before long, her replacement was doing the same thing. Only ten more years to retirement. John didn’t know if he could hold on, but he didn’t see that he had any choice.

At church, John was a stand out. Especially as the English service continued to develop. The older Germans became a smaller and smaller minority; young adults, newly arrived in the city to chase careers and futures became the dominant demographic in the church. People came to church dressed. And “dressed” reflected the standards of the work place. These were not Bohemian artists, they were employees in mid-town offices. They worked for American Express and Chase Manhattan. A couple of the regulars were fashion designers.

Everyone looked good on Sabbath morning except Alex and John. On warm summer Sabbaths, John would show up in a white tank top with a red bandana rolled and tied around his head to keep sweat out of his eyes, dandruff evident in his thin hair.

He looked out of place, but the young adults treated him kindly. He was even invited to read Scripture occasionally. But as far as I could tell his faith had not grown at all. We occasionally talked of God and faith and salvation. But mostly we talked about trouble.

He came to church one Sabbath with some superficial scabs on his face and forehead and casts on both wrists.

“John, what happened?”

“A couple of muggers threw me down the stairs as I was emptying the turnstiles of their tokens. I don’t know why they did that. They had already grabbed the bag from me. They had what they wanted. Why did they have to throw me down the stairs.”

“Are your arms broken?”

“The doctor said one bone is broken in my left arm. My right wrist is sprained. The doctor said it may be worse than the break. I just don’t understand why they had to do it. I didn’t do anything to them.”

I helped John empty some of the stuff from his apartment. We filled my big Plymouth station wagon from behind the front seat to the tailgate window high with books to give away. We went through some of the food and began putting some of the most seriously out-dated items in garbage bags. It didn’t make much of a dent, but it made the aisles in his house a little wider.

Then eighteen months later, John showed up at church again injured. No casts this time, but both hands were wrapped in white gauze. His face looked strange. It wasn’t cut, but it was, how can I put this, messed up. John told me the story.

“Early this week I yelled at a couple of fare-beaters when they jumped the turnstile. I hate those guys. They’ll look right at you, know that you are watching, then wait until the train pulls in and jump over the stiles and run to the train.

“So I yelled at them through the intercom. You know I have one of those new self-contained booths they’re putting in.

“Well, those same guys came back on Thursday. I know it was the same guys. I recognized them. They tried to pour gasoline through the vent on the door, but they couldn’t so they poured the gas through the token slot and set it on fire.”

“How did you escape?”

“Fortunately, they ran off and I managed to get out the door. The booth was completely destroyed.”

John’s burns, that is the wounds on his skin, were relatively minor. The doctor promised his hands would heal with only minor scarring. But I wondered what it did to his soul?

* * *

About six months later during a sermon, I invited anyone who felt called by God to be baptized to talk with me after the service. As I was visiting with people at the rear of the church, John approached me and in his trademark stutter told me he wanted to be baptized.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had heard about John’s unbelief for eight years. And here he was asking for baptism.

“John, that’s fantastic. Can we meet here at the church on Wednesday to talk about it?”

“I-I-I’d like that.”

On Wednesday, John came by the church.

"John, I am thrilled you want to be baptized. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. Tell me, what made you finally decide?"

"Well," he began, "you know I have a lot of problems. My father abused me when I was just a kid. I grew up in a church but our home . . ."

I interrupted him. "John, I know life has been difficult. I wish it had been different. But what I want to know is how you finally came to decide to be baptized.”

“Well, you remember that for a little while I had a farm in Arkansas, and that I only came back to New York because we couldn’t make a living farming. I really wanted to stay on the farm. . . .”

“John, yes, I remember that and your son being AWOL from the Navy and about your daughter and the money.

“But I want to know, what made you finally decide to be baptized. You’ve been coming to church all these years and I know that faith has been hard for you. Do you believe in God now?”

"W-W-Well, I know that many very intelligent people believe he exists. Even many scientists believe in him."

I was flabbergasted. John was in exactly the same spot he had been eight years ago when we first met and talked about God.

"But John,” I interrupted again, "Do you believe in God yourself?"

"I'm not too sure. It seems reasonable that he ought to exist. And since all those smart people believe in him, I don’t think God is an impossibility.”

I was getting exasperated. I changed the conversation. “John, have you accepted Jesus as your Savior? Has Jesus forgiven your sins?"

"It would be nice to think so."

“You mean you don’t know if Jesus has forgiven you?”

“It would be very nice to think that.”

Now what? Here was someone asking for baptism who did not know if he believed in God and did not know if Jesus had forgiven his sins.

I picked up my Bible and opened it to 1 John 1:9. I handed it to John and asked him to read it. He didn’t stutter when he read.

If we confess our sins,

he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins

and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness

He looked up.

“John, have you confessed your sins?” Silly question. I knew he had. He had confessed them to me a hundred times.

"Yes." he answered.

“According to what you have just read, does God promise to forgive our sins if we confess them?"

"Yes."

Good, I thought, he’s getting it.

"So, John, you've confessed your sins, and God has promised that if you confess he will forgive. So tell me, has God forgiven you your sins?"

He hesitated, then answered in a timid, plaintive voice, "It would sure be nice to think so."

I was dumbfounded. He was in exactly the same place spiritually he had been in our first visit back in the New York Center. What to say?

It was my job to say something. John was asking for baptism. I should be able to offer some kind of guidance for dealing with his doubts. I should be able to help him come to faith. I rambled on about theories and ideas and church history and science a bit. John was patient. He listened. He answered direct questions. But he could not make any clear affirmation beyond his awareness of the testimony of smart people who were believers and his scant hope that God (if there was one) would be merciful.

How could I blame him. Given his personal history I couldn’t question the sincerity of his search. But after half an hour of searching for some way to lead him to voice a personal affirmation of faith I was exasperated.

"J. B." I protested, "You don't believe in God. You can't bring yourself to say you believe Jesus has forgiven your sins. So why do you want to be baptized?"

"Well, as you know, I studied with several church groups and at work I’ve been ripped off and mugged and nearly burned alive, and . . ."

"John, John, I know.” I interrupted, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice. “But just tell me, why do you want to be baptized?"

"Because," he said, "this is the one place in the world where I am safe."

***

Regarding some teachings of the church, all that I can say with confidence is that some very smart people believe them. However, I cannot say like John, “This is the one place where I have been safe.” Unlike John, I’ve been blessed with kindness and faithfulness from many people and in many places. But the Adventist Church has been wonderfully gracious to me.

Awhile back I was visiting with an importance personage in the church who joined the Adventist Church as a young adult. He said he had given up everything for the church. I think he imagined a career he might have had outside the church given his drive and abilities. He would have been an acclaimed writer enjoying a good income. But he had given up all that to serve the church. Instead of being listed on the masthead of The Atlantic or Harper’s and writing for America’s elite, he was the editor of church publications read by lowly believers. It was a magnificent sacrifice . . . in his eyes.

Listening to him talk about his sacrifice for the church, I realized my experience is something else. My greatest treasures are gifts from the church–a global circle of friends, confidence in the goodness of God, a retirement plan for this world and an attractive vision of the next world, a reasonably wholesome pattern of life, ideas worth several lifetimes of exploration, the privilege of writing books, a decent education. Certainly God might have found other ways to supply these gifts, but for me they have been the gifts of Adventism.

Like John, the most I can say about some church dogma is “I know a lot of smart people believe it.” And like John, I have found this church to be a safe place. Why would I leave?