By the time my thirteenth birthday arrived and summer vacation had rolled around I was scheduled for meetings in three states. This meant I would be away from home until school started again. I had already baptized several persons, most of them my age. A number of others who had "come forward" were immersed by elders who were afraid that, because of my size, I might drown them in the process, or vice versa. At least two of the meetings were in tents. This was before the time of amplifiers and loud-speakers so I had to develop my voice range which was not easy for one my age. Meetings were held all seven nights of the week and often three times on Sunday. There was not much time for respite.
It was not all serious business, and years later, older brethren would recount to my embarrassment, how, when I was preaching in a country schoolhouse or other rural setting, I would be out playing leapfrog or marbles with other boys of my age, and they would have to come out and tell me I had better stop and wash up at the pump because it was time for the meeting to begin. Since many of my engagements were in farming communities or small villages, and I stayed in a different home every night, sleeping under all sorts of conditions and eating all kinds of food, I received training which stood me in good stead later as I traveled in other parts of the world.
It would be interesting to me, but boring to you, if I were to recount the meetings in which I engaged for the next two or three years, so I will resist the urge to pursue that course. There are some places which return vividly to mind. Among them is Bonne Terre, Missouri, which took me back to within six miles of my birthplace. Here, where the remnants of the Cantwell congregation were to be found, I stayed in the home of my paternal grandparents while speaking each night to a capacity crowd. Often the building could not contain the listeners. Seventeen persons were immersed, some of whom still live and are active in the work of the Lord. The spiritual enthusiasm in the town was at a high pitch and the saints were blessed.
Another place I especially remember was a rural congregation called Walnut Hill, south of Springfield, Missouri, located near Battlefield, so designated because of the fierce Civil War battle in which the famous General Nathaniel Lyons, of the Union forces, was mortally wounded. It was not historical lore which impressed the place upon my mind, but the fact that the group of saints there purchased for me my first suit with long trousers. When I went in to Springfield with one of the elders, Brother Bussard, he sprang a complete surprise on me by taking me to a clothing store on South Campbell Street where he outfitted me in a suit with a vest. The price was fifteen dollars and there was no sales tax.
Then, with two more years of high school before me, my father decided to move to Topeka, Kansas. An elderly gentleman, Peter Griggs, offered him a contract to manage Mount Auburn Cemetery, and he found the lure of a regular income irresistible. He called me by long distance telephone and I went to Topeka where I met him and exhausted my little bank account by making a down payment on an old house outside the city limits which I thought of as "that tumble-down shack in Athlone." It had no indoor plumbing and was in a state of decrepitude. It was all we could afford. When my mother saw it she said, "Poor people have poor ways," and set about trying to make it more livable. My father had great plans for developing it when we got on our feet. We never got there and the "dream castle" never emerged. He spent every spare minute preaching and settling squabbles at places which did not reimburse him enough to pay the grocery bill.
When I started to Highland Park High School I was in a different world than I had been in while attending the little two-teacher high school in Pearl, Illinois. But there was no speech department and when I took it upon myself to enroll in the National Oratorical Contest I had to do all of the work on the speech myself. In the elimination contest I was obviously at a disadvantage and did not even win an alternate position. First place was captured by George Chumos of Topeka High School, the fluent son of a Greek immigrant. When I learned that he had been coached by Miss Carmi Wolfe, head of the Speech Department, I enrolled in Topeka High School where I had to pay my own tuition.
The following year under the expert tutelage of Miss Wolfe, I captured the city contest, the state contest, the regional contest, and lost out in the one which would have sent me to Washington to compete in the finals, held in the House of Representatives. When I graduated from high school I went to Topeka Business College on a scholarship. I studied banking and accounting and ended up taking a position with the Columbian Title and Trust Company, as a researcher for abstracts. I spent my noon hours poring over the old Indian treaties and government land grants. But after less than six months had passed, the call of the whitened fields became so great, I could not resist. I resigned my position, much against the will of the company officials and returned to traveling as an evangelist.
God was gracious unto me and my efforts were crowned with what "our brotherhood" regarded as success. There were "additions" in every meeting. New congregations were being started and when divisions occurred, as they frequently did, we were able to consolidate "the faithful ones" who "came out from among them" to preserve the doctrine in its purity.
I was nineteen years old when I went back to Flat River, Missouri, for what turned out to be one of the most eventful meetings of my life. Every evening when the bell sent its mellow tones out across this mining town the people began to surge toward the building. It was literally "standing room only" every night. I stayed with an uncle in Bonne Terre, about seven miles away but I was in Flat River daily, visiting the members and doing personal work. My song leader was Arvel Watts, one of the best I had ever known, but the greatest thing going for him, as I soon discovered, was that he was the older brother of Nellie Watts. I had always liked girls, and even at my tender age had imagined I was in love with a number of them. But that was before I saw Nell, a raven-haired brown-eyed beauty, whose simple charm swept me off my feet and left my mind reeling.
J.W. Watts, whose first initials stood for John Wesley, was reared in a home of "shouting Methodists," as was his wife. But when he heard Daniel Sommer preach he was baptized into Christ at once and was already a member at Flat River when my father obeyed the gospel. By the time I grew up and returned to Flat River for the meeting, he and Arvel each owned a store, and Nell was working as a clerk in her father's place of business. There were six children in the Watts family, as there were in my own father's family, and the home was one of genuine Christian commitment, under the direction of a stern but just father whose word was law, and who tolerated no "monkey business."
It was Nell's mother, I think, who first suspicioned that I was ending up at the store every day just before noon, not so much because I was interested in food, but to see her daughter. When she mentioned her feelings to Nell's father he said it was silly, and that in spite of the fact I wasn't yet dry behind the ears, I had too much sense to marry at my age. Meanwhile I could see no indication that I was making any headway, and the meeting was fast drawing to a conclusion. One of Nell's sisters did not help my state of depression by informing me that Nell had long ago announced that she would never marry a preacher or a traveling salesman.
It was on the final afternoon of the meeting that Nell's older sister and her fiance suggested that they would take me back to Bonne Terre after the meeting. He was the local Oldsmobile dealer and drove a new coupe with a rumble seat. As Nell and I rode along in it I extracted from her a promise that she would write to me if I wrote to her. She said she would answer any letters she received. That's where she made her mistake.
I wrote every day. Some days I wrote twice. Four more months went by and I found a few days in which I would not be preaching. I arranged a date in advance and during those few days we agreed that we would marry. I do not think I ever made a formal proposal. We simply seemed to take it for granted that we would marry. I went on my way rejoicing but now sent every cent I could spare to Nell who placed it in a special account so that we could purchase a car and later our furniture. A few months later I returned so we could make final arrangements. I had been writing every day and printing a little sixteen page quarterly dedicated just to her, but now the days seemed to creep by.
Finally, the time came to get the license and make the final preparations, and on Sunday afternoon, we were married in the living-room of the Watts' home, with my uncle, L.E. Ketcherside, officiating. It was a very simple ceremony, lasting but a few minutes. There were no special decorations. We left immediately enroute to Topeka, Kansas, where my folks lived. On the way we stopped overnight at Nevada, Missouri, where we resolved to make our home.
After a few days in Topeka, we started for California, where I was scheduled for three meetings. There were no motels and most of the roads were unpaved. We expected to camp along the way and had a tent and all of the equipment with us. But the second night out, at North Platte, Nebraska, I became violently ill and developed a high fever. The next morning I drove as far as the little town of Sutherland, a distance of twenty miles, and it became apparent I could go no farther. We drove down the dusty main street until we saw the sign on a dingy little building, "Frank Shambaugh, M.D., Physician and Surgeon." Dr. Shambaugh examined me and diagnosed my condition as appendicitis. He suggested that we get a room in the little unprepossessing two-story hotel, and he would pack me in ice in the hope that the inflammation would subside and I could return home for surgery.
After seven days in the little hotel it was obvious there was no improvement and something would have to be done at once. In a private home converted into a three-room hospital I underwent surgery on Sunday afternoon. I was frightfully nauseated from the ether. Each morning Nell came to remain with me through the day. Each morning she went back to the hotel room by herself. When I became able to drive we took a test run out through the country and the next day started for Topeka. We were financially broke. Our last cent was gone. We were in debt and I was too weak to work. But we were both alive and we were together.
A short time later we rented our first place, a little three-room meagerly furnished apartment in an old house at Nevada, Missouri. Here the members took us to their hearts and we found real joy in sharing our lives together. The congregation continued their plan of mutual ministry, for they had never hired a preacher. The elders and other brethren of ability edified the saints. I simply took my turn with them, but it was not necessary that I be present on Sunday. I was free to go out and take the message to others.
I have been casting about for the right word to describe our relationship with the community centered around Nevada, and I have decided upon the term "idyllic." When you look it up in your dictionary you will see at once why I selected it. If you will permit me to backtrack a little, I should like to tell you we moved there on November 7, 1928. After we had remained at my father's home until I recovered strength following my surgery, we returned to Nell's home, so she could vote for a president the first time. The election was on November 6.
The choice was not an agonizing one. She voted for Herbert Hoover. His opponent was Al Smith, four times governor of New York. As if that were not enough to condemn him in the eyes of midwesterners he was also a Catholic and a "wet" during the days of prohibition. Moreover, he wore a brown derby, and the thought of someone in the White House with that kind of hat seemed ridiculous. So Nell voted for Hoover. I was not quite old enough to vote. The Republicans campaigned on their record of increasing prosperity under the Harding and Coolidge administrations. They promised to end poverty and make possible "a chicken in every pot, a car in every garage." None of us realized we were facing a depression in which every car would go to pot and most of us would be raising chickens in the garage.
Nevada is the county seat of Vernon county, Missouri. We moved there because it was about halfway between our parental homes. When we did the rural flavor was still quite pronounced. Both the Missouri Pacific and the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railways ran trains though the town so that it was linked with every part of the United States by connecting lines in great industrial centers. But Nevada was still a country town. Saturday was the big day of the week. Farmers with produce to sell parked around the courthouse square and dispensed their wares from the backs of their vehicles. There were still hitching racks for those who drove teams.
Sidewalks were crowded with people who visited all day, going home only in time to do the chores in the evening. Harmless gossip flowed freely and tidbits of news were exchanged. When two persons met the general form of greeting was, "Have you heard?" and the newcomer was given the latest news. It was a day when one could speak on the courthouse lawn and be assured of a crowd eager for something to provide a diversion from whittling and spitting tobacco juice at a mark on the ground.
The small congregation meeting in the plain little white frame structure on North Main Street was composed primarily of farmers with a sprinkling of railroad employees. It was under the care of three elders -- Brethren Kryselmier, Billings and Journey. The first was a retired "hog-head" as everyone called a railroad engineer, the second was a dairyman, and the third a farmer. They did not "hire" me to move to the town to work with the church. They were surprised when I told them I was coming to their town, a decision I reached while holding a meeting for the congregation the year before. I suspected at the time they were glad to hear it, but they did not make a great fuss over the announcement.
No congregation among us had "a minister." I was regarded as an evangelist. There was a clear understanding that the primary task of an evangelist was to proclaim the good tidings to those who had never obeyed the gospel. When a congregation was planted, the evangelist remained to train and prepare his converts until men with the qualifications for bishops arose among them. We were imbued with the idea enunciated by Benjamin Franklin, the gospel preacher, who said, "Feed the whole church the whole word, and leadership will rise among the members as cream rises upon the milk." When men exhibited the qualifications required of bishops they were elected by the multitude of the saints and ordained by the evangelist.
At this juncture his work was terminated as he commended the congregation and the elders "to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified." The evangelist was then ready to move on or to band together another group in the locality and duplicate the process. The idea of hiring out to preach the gospel to a congregation of saints with bishops at so much per week, no more entered our minds than it did those of the believers in the days of the apostles. Such terms as hiring or firing preachers, contracts, vacation stipulations, were as foreign to our spiritual vocabulary as they were to the new covenant scriptures.
When an evangelist was a member of a local body of disciples, he held no office or priority in that congregation. As a member he took his turn in edifying and exhorting, but a great deal of the time he was laboring with new or weak places which needed his talents and advice. It seemed silly to concentrate the strongest talent in a place which needed it least. In war the greatest firepower is directed to the weakest spots. During the first winter I was in Nevada I spoke about once every six weeks. At other times I sat with Nell and listened to the other brethren admonish us. But I was making personal calls in every part of the country. I mapped out areas and visited the farm homes of all who lived within the perimeter. I talked to them about the Lord and began to hold Bible studies in rural meetinghouses, grange halls and schoolbuildings at night. Frequently I was invited by the schoolteacher to come and speak to the children during the day. I came to know hundreds of people.
In the town I secured permission to speak one day per week to the crew working in the roundhouse of the Missouri Pacific Railway. While they were eating lunch together I spoke to those who were willing to come. It soon became so much a part of their life that I broke up the card games on the day I was there. I spoke frequently at the chapel for the mental patients in the State Hospital north of town. Soon I was becoming a kind of regular fixture at the noon luncheon clubs of the Rotarians, Kiwanians and Lions. When a speaker cancelled out on them they called me. The railroad men elected me chaplain of the combined Boosters Clubs of the Joplin and White River Divisions of the Missouri Pacific.
As a result of these contacts I was immersing men and women in ponds, lakes, rivers, and even stock tanks in feedlots. So many railroaders became Christians that on Sunday "the caller" could come and hand in a list of workmen needed on an emergency train and we could make up his crew of engineers, firemen, brakemen and conductors, from the congregation. We even had the Railway Express representatives. I was thrilled with life, filled with zest, and ready to believe that we could take the world for Christ.
Then, during the sixth month of our marriage, Nell discovered she was pregnant. I was still soaring on imaginary wings at the thought of being a husband, and now a new dimension was to be added. I would be a father. It was all kind of mind-boggling to realize that at my age I was going to be entrusted with rearing a future president of the United States. I was overwhelmed with the thought that we would have a baby of our very own. As the weeks passed into months and Nell's body began to swell with the new life within, she became as beautiful to me as she appeared grotesque and ungainly to herself. I shall never forget the night I placed my hand against her abdomen and felt the fetal heartbeat of our joint production.
We knew we could not continue another winter in an apartment so cold that ice froze at night in the bucket of water in the kitchen. And then, just as if an unseen hand was guiding our destiny, a small five-room house became vacant directly across the street from the meetinghouse. We rented it and moved in. There was nothing good or fancy about it. Our furniture was not adequate for it, but this did not affect us. The folk in the congregation were good to us and the baby shower provided the needs of one about whom we had dreamed but had not yet seen.
There was no hospital in the city so we made arrangements for the delivery at home, following instructions of the dignified and elderly Dr. Love, who seemed to be altogether too calm for such a momentous task. It was early in the morning of September 18, 1929, when Nell prodded me awake to tell me that the hour was approaching. I could not find the light switch in the dark and fell over everything in two rooms trying to get to the telephone. When I finally got the doctor awake to give him the news of the century, he told me he would get dressed and be along as soon as he fixed himself a cup of coffee. I could not understand how anyone could stop to drink a cup of coffee while facing the most momentous event of his whole career. I was walking the floor, trying to remember what I had read in doctor books about delivering babies when he knocked on the door.
He was as much a master of delivering young husbands of their fears as he was in delivering young wives of their babies. He told me he would need some things done and issued some orders for me to prepare this and that. While I was bustling about doing it he sat down in our only comfortable chair and took a nap. It was only after it was all over and he had gone that I realized he had asked me to do things which he never referred to or asked about again.
We had arranged for our aged sister in Christ, Mrs. Richard F. Edwards, to come and help us with the baby. She was a precious and gentle soul who had borne a number of children of her own, and had assisted with the birth of many more. She was present soon after the doctor arrived, and proceeding efficiently in spite of my getting in her way. She was helping Dr. Love in the actual delivery when, all of a sudden, he said, "Well, well, it's a fine big boy." It was, too, because the scales registered nine-and-a-half pounds.
Nell seemed to take it fine, but I was completely worn out from the ordeal. I shall never forget the sense of well-being which was mine when they laid Gerald Bernard in my arms for the first time. Nell selected the name, choosing it because we could not think of anyone in either of our families who ever bore such a name. I do not recall that anyone has ever called him Gerald since that morning. Somehow he became tagged with "Jerry" and that is what it has been ever since. A completely new phase of life had begun for us. I found myself humming a snatch of the song made famous by "Little Jack Little" a famous radio performer of the time, " . . . the baby makes three, we're happy in my blue heaven."
When I had recovered sufficiently to walk to town I went to the office of Dr. Love and told him I had come to pay my bill. He got out his account book and said, "Let me see. I examined your wife four times here in the office during her pregnancy, and then came to the house and delivered the baby, and have made two trips back since to check on things. I'm afraid I shall have to charge you thirty dollars in all, but if you think that is too much I can take the baby in on it."
I have known a lot of experiences in life. Some of them have been tragic. Others were joyful. But for sheer pleasure mingled with constant concern there is nothing equal to rearing a baby. Every degree of fever arouses grave apprehension. Every little cry at night is heard and brings you from a snug bed to tramp across a cold linoleum. In reality, babies are tyrants. They are utterly and wholly selfish. It is better to realize this and be truthful about it. They scream until they grow livid in the face and quickly change to gurgles of contentment as soon as you pick them up and start talking softly in the special vernacular of baby-talk which they love. If you do not pick one of them up soon enough he shifts into the tactic of holding his breath. You become frantic. The fact is that no baby ever died from holding his breath. He always catches it just in time to go one living and employ the same ruse next time.
Babies belch in your face and burp down your back just when you are preparing to leave for a special meeting and haven't time to change suits, if you are fortunate enough to have another one. You arrive smelling like the custodian in the sour cream division of the local dairy. Babies sleep all morning and arouse only to mess up their diapers just when you have poured the coffee and sat down to luncheon. The timing of a baby is uncanny. He can be trusted implicitly to disrupt any plan and wreak havoc on any schedule. And he is worth every minute of it!
His first attempt at crawling, the first time he yanks the table cloth off and sits amidst the wreckage gaily flailing away at it and scattering gravy with both hands, the first stumbling step, the first bumbling word, all of these are mileposts in a career, the topic of telephone calls with which to bore patient listeners, the subject of letters with which to thrill the hearts of distant grandparents. Regardless of one's educational attainments, he will learn more about life by living with a baby than by sitting in ivy-covered towers of scholasticism listening to bearded professors.
But the world has to go on even if you have a baby. No moratorium is declared on the making of history while you play with your offspring. Six days after Jerry was born Lieutenant Jimmie Doolittle made the first all-instrument plane flight. A new era was ushered in. One month later the stock market crashed. Millions of shares were dumped. Billions of dollars were lost. On October 29 panic selling increased. The ticker tape was almost three hours behind. Thousands of investors saw their fortunes completely wiped out. Some of them jumped from office windows to shatter their bodies on the concrete far below. Men who were wealthy a few days before blew their brains out rather than face life as paupers. Fear and foreboding gripped the country.
Men began to speak of national bankruptcy. It was as if some evil genius had suddenly taken control. The feeling of ominous threat was heightened when a strange fire broke out in the Executive Office building in Washington, D.C., on Christmas Eve. We were tottering on the brink of "The Great Depression."
This year of 1930 will be long remembered by those who are old enough to remember it. It was a time of disaster. A great drought lay like a pall over the Ohio and Mississippi River areas. Food resources were depleted, and unemployment and disease took a frightful toll. The census taken during the year determined that a population of 123,202,624 occupied the then forty-eight states, and by autumn President Hoover reluctantly had to admit there were 4,500,000 unemployed. Within a year the amount doubled.
On December 11, the largest bank failure in the United States occurred when the Bank of the United States closed down in New York City, leaving almost a half million depositors stranded. A few days later The Chelsea Bank and Trust Company failed to open the doors of its six outlets and in rapid succession twenty-eight banks in the south and midwest went under. In the next twelve months there were 2,294 bank closings.
To add to the nation's woes in 1930, great fires broke out in various places. One such holocaust at the Ohio State Prison in Columbus resulted in the death of 318 convicts. The state capitol of Bismarck, North Dakota, went up in flames and the loss was estimated to exceed a million dollars. In spite of all this, those who lived the simple life in rural areas seemed to suffer least. Always cooperative and willing to share, they accepted the situation with a cheerful calm which belied the fright stories in the newspapers. The little congregation at Nevada continued to grow in members added, as well as in grace and knowledge of the truth. As one brother said, "You don't notice a depression if you've never known anything with which to contrast it."
When our baby was about six months old we began a tour which enabled me to conduct meetings previously arranged in four states. He proved to be a good traveler, sleeping much of the way, lulled into slumber by the motion of the automobile. At Topeka, Kansas, we stayed with my folk and during the meeting each night the principal question was who would get to hold the baby. This was the age of "protracted meetings" in Churches of Christ. They were called that in order to distinguish them from "revivals." This was a sectarian term which no self-respecting preacher among us would use. The meeting in Topeka drew capacity crowds, a not too difficult thing because of the limited seating space.
After some tearful farewells, we went next to Marshalltown, Iowa, where I had lived briefly as a boy. Once again we were blessed with good audiences although our cause had never particularly prospered in the area. It was a pleasure to see once more a number of those whom we met when we moved to the area from the little Ozark mining town years before.
The next stop was at River Rouge, the home of the great Ford automobile plant in the Detroit, Michigan area. Already Henry Ford was a legendary character, although he would live for seventeen more years. In 1893, after spending all of his leisure time in experimentation, he built his first automobile in a carriage shed. In 1903 he founded the Ford Motor Company. During the year of my birth he began production of the "Model T." It was so popular it became the butt of jokes by stage comedians and everyone passed along the latest one accompanied by loud guffaws.
Someone in a crowd would say, "There was this preacher who drove a Model T, and got stuck in the mud on his way to church. He pried it out with a rail from a nearby fence, but when he got up to preach, mad and muddy, he began by saying, 'Anyone who drives a Model T, will probably go to hell.' In the back of the house a man stood up and said, 'Amen!' The preacher said, 'How come you said Amen when I predicted anyone who drives a Ford will go to hell?' The man replied, 'Because if she gets you there, she will bring you back.' " Fords were always spoken of in the feminine gender. It was rumored that this was because they were so difficult to get started. Some said it was because you had to pet them to keep them working. They were familiarly called "Tin Lizzies."
In 1927, the "Model T" was discontinued and replaced by the "Model A." By the time it was produced, Ford had turned out fifteen million cars, all the same color. His motto was, "Select any color you want, provided it is black." We went to Detroit because originally the congregation of River Rouge was primarily composed of people from Flat River and the rest of the Missouri Lead Belt. In 1914, Ford raised the wages of assembly line workers from $2.50 to $5.00 per day. The general consensus of opinions was that he had gone crazy and would ruin the country, since no man alive was worth $5.00 per day. People flocked to Detroit from every section of the country. Congregations were depleted elsewhere, while those who went to work for Ford formed congregations of folk "down home" to relieve their loneliness in a strange environment composed of different ethnic groups.
We stayed with Charles and Leray Stewart, because Leray and her sister Opal were part of the group of young people at Flat River with which Nell had been associated. It was a great time to be alive and we became endeared to this generous young Christian couple who took us in. As I write this, they are still living near Ludington, Michigan, where Charles has been an elder for many years at the second oldest congregation in Michigan, in a rural setting nestled amidst the great cherry orchards which make that section famous.
The River Rouge meetinghouse was filled every night. There were probably as many who came to see Nell as to hear me. Homesickness for southern Missouri was written upon many faces. Everyone was asking about relatives. It was like "old home week." One night when the place was so crowded that chairs filled the aisles, the Bruce family came over from Windsor, Ontario, just across the Detroit River in Canada. Adam and Peggy Bruce had immigrated from the Slamannan District, a colliery region in Scotland made famous through the preaching of the gospel by James Anderson. With them was a younger brother of Adam, George Bruce, who had just arrived from Scotland and who spoke with a brogue so thick you could "slice it with a knife."
They insisted that Nell and I come and spend the day with them as they had an urgent matter which they wanted to discuss. We settled upon a day and drove across the beautiful new Ambassador Bridge, which spanned the Detroit River. It had been open but a few months, the ribbon having been cut on November 11, 1929. It was 1850 feet long and 47 feet wide and had cost $20,000,000. We had never seen anything like it. In Windsor, which gave us the feeling of being "strangers in a strange land" we had difficulty in finding the hospitable home of the Bruces.
Although more than forty-six years have passed as I write this, I can still remember our luncheon, as if it were yesterday. Peggy Bruce was an excellent cook and she had prepared a Scotch meat pie. No one can bake such a pie as those from "the land of the thistle" and it was delicious. We topped it off with cantaloupe a la mode, and since we had never seen this combination before it was a gustatory delight.
As soon as we had finished eating, Adam and George Bruce and I went out on the front porch and sat down to talk about the cause we loved. It was not always easy to unravel their Scots dialect, but my ears became more accustomed to it as we conversed. I learned about the congregations in the Slamannan District which lies between Edinburgh and Glasgow. They told of the drift of city churches into new ways and new thought patterns which were too liberal for many of the brethren. I learned about Walter Crosthwaite who resisted the inroads of modernism and called for the brethren to stand for the old paths. Certain congregations had declared themselves as opposed to any further erosion of the faith. They had come to be known as "the Old Paths brethren." There was a fairly well drawn line between themselves and congregations affiliated with the British Association of Churches of Christ.
It was the feeling of the Bruces that I should visit Scotland and help to strengthen the brethren. They felt that my position on "mutual edification" as opposed to the congregational importation of a preacher to act as a "one-man pastor" at a stipulated fee would establish a rapport with the brethren in Great Britain where the practice of "mutual ministry" was regarded as the scriptural way. I think my age may have had something to do with the proposal. They undoubtedly felt that one who was young would be able to adjust and adapt to the congregations in "Auld Scotia." George Bruce declared he had never heard anyone preach with the power I manifested. I had just passed my twenty-second birthday.
We drove back to Detroit to the little frame house of the Stewarts with its three large windows in the living room and its lattice-work concealing the area under the front porch (our way of identifying the place) and as we rode along we talked about George Bruce's intention of putting the wheels in motion in his native land. He did as he promised but none of us knew that before our plans could be carried out the Second World War would burst upon the world and we would sail upon the Queen Elizabeth on her first trip as a passenger-carrying vessel after having been used to transport troops, some of whom would never return. I would be thirty-nine years old, and Jerry, now nestled in his mother's arms would be eighteen years of age.
We can never assess, at the time, the purpose of God which brings about what appears to be a chance meeting. But as I look back upon it, I realize that had I not met George Bruce during the few weeks of his sojourn with his brother, I would never have gone to Scotland, England, or North Ireland. If I had never gone I would not be writing this account at all. I would have continued to be a narrow factional leader, debating my brethren and arrogantly defending division among the saints as the only means of achieving doctrinal purity. My life would have been a journey of frustration instead of a pilgrimage of joy.
The meeting at River Rouge closed on an exultant note, the house jammed with listeners. We drove from Detroit to Flat River, Missouri, where my next meeting was scheduled. On the way we learned that Jack Sharkey had lost his heavyweight championship to the German, Max Schmeling, by fouling him in the fourth round. When the pictures of the fight were given a re-run the year following it was found there had been no foul. But it was too late!
The meeting at Flat River began on a happy note. The building in which my father had first heard the gospel and stepped forward to pledge his allegiance to Christ was filled from the first meeting. Nell's brother Arvel was the song leader. He was one of the best with whom I have ever worked. Enthusiasm grew with every session and actually turned into spiritual excitement. Every evening people could be seen walking in small groups toward the meetinghouse, converging upon it from all directions. Sometimes it was almost filled before the first bell was rung thirty minutes prior to the time scheduled to begin. When the final bell was tolled to indicate the service was starting the space inside was all taken and people were outside looking in through the open windows and door.
A number were baptized into Christ and some of them were my kinsmen after the flesh. The interest was heightened by the fact we had just come from Detroit to which the "economic exodus" had taken so many from the Lead Belt. Now their loved ones "down home" swarmed around us wanting to know if we had seen this one or that one. The meeting was greatly aided by the presence of saints from Bonne Terre where I had conducted such a successful effort while still a "boy preacher." Among the elders from Bonne Terre were Henry and Cornelius Mabery, pioneers of the faith in the area around Mine La Motte before moving to Bonne Terre. Always active in the service of the Master, they grounded their families in the faith until now a fourth generation is carrying the banner which they unfurled among the ranks of unbelievers.
Before we returned to Nevada I conducted a series of meetings for the little band meeting at Crystal City, Missouri. My uncle, L.E. Ketcherside, had done personal work, going from door-to-door in Crystal City and the twin-city of Festus, until he succeeded in banding together a little group to "keep house for the Lord." It was not an easy task. Crystal City was named after the huge glass factory, located there because of the abundance of raw material used in the manufacture of plate glass. The work had attracted many immigrants from Southern Europe who were willing to work in the heat cast off by the huge furnaces. Many of the older ones were members of the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Churches and could hardly understand English when they were sober, which was not often.
Festus was originally a settlement known for its saloons and the prostitution which flourished in conjunction with its liquor dispensaries. The town was called "Tanglefoot" because of the unsteady gait of its citizens when full of cheap booze. As a better element moved in it was thought that such a name would only perpetuate the disreputable character of the place. The people met together to select a new name under which they could be incorporated, and it was unanimously decided they would have a man open the Bible and the first proper name which caught his eye would become the official designation. The book fell open to Acts 25:1, "Now when Festus was come into the province . . . " It is a good thing it did not flip open to Isaiah 8:1, or Tanglefoot would have become Maher-shal-al-hash-baz. With its zip code it would have been hard to get on an envelope.
In spite of the hardships which he faced, and which never really discouraged or daunted him, my uncle kept on until he had a congregation meeting. He taught them until they were able to take care of themselves. None of them were educated but they had a zeal for the Word, imbued by their mentor. Charles Simms became a leader and a preacher of the Truth, and other humble brethren could speak effectively to the edification of the saints. I held my meeting in a house erected by my uncle on the rear of the lot owned by one of his sisters, for he could not only plant a congregation, he could also do carpentry work as few others I have seen. When the meeting was over we drove back to Nevada after an absence of more than three months.
Upon our return after more than three months of absence we found the congregation of saints at Nevada in an excellent state. Under the guidance of the bishops, and with the cooperation of the other brethren, the morale was high and the size of the audiences remained at such an excellent level there was serious talk of erecting a new meetinghouse. In every congregation of that day, almost fifty years ago, especially those with a rural constituency, there were always brethren who had scruples and qualms about certain things. However, at Nevada, the others did not try to press an opposing view but graciously accommodated themselves so they would not "set at naught a brother" and thus peace was maintained.
It was decided to bring a luncheon one Sunday and spread tables in the rear of the meetinghouse at noon so all could eat together and be present for an afternoon session in which to discuss the subject of erecting a new house. One brother objected on the ground that his conscience would not allow him to eat in "the Lord's house" or in a place secured with "the Lord's money." No one argued with him about the fact the Lord's house consisted of living stones and not of concrete and boards. In deference to his conscience they rented a hall for the meal and everyone was happy. Two years later, the weak brother had become strong enough to outgrow his scruple on the matter and we could eat together in the basement without objection.
The word for scruple is from the Latin scrupulus, and refers to "a little pebble in the shoe." Such a foreign object pains no one but the wearer of the shoe and those who do not feel the twinge must slow down until the weak brother can walk with them. Eventually, he may recognize that the pebble is not an essential part of the shoe and remove it to his comfort and the quickened pace of himself and others. The fact that we walk in the Spirit does not mean we all have the same gait. We should neither drive our brothers away nor run off from them. It is the stronger who must slow down for the weak cannot walk any faster until they also become strong.
It was decided we would wreck the old meetinghouse and salvage any material possible and erect the new one ourselves, since we had several brethren who could oversee the construction. The sisters would take turns providing food for the workers at noon. There was a sufficiently large crew the day we started so that we wrecked the old building and stacked the material in one day. When we began the new one, several men from the community with carpentry skills volunteered their labor. Some of them were immersed into Christ before the new structure was completed.
Only one incident marred the proceeding. When the framework was up some of the brethren sitting around eating their luncheon suggested we should take out insurance upon it to cover the cost of construction in case of wind, fire or other damage. One brother hooted at the idea and protested emphatically. He declared that it was the Lord's work and the Lord would protect it. He insisted that nothing adverse would happen either to the structure or to anyone working on it, and to take out insurance would be to show a lack of faith in God. He said, "It would be a shame to insure the Lord's property with unbelievers." Three days later he fell off of a scaffold and broke his arm. We took him to an "unbelieving doctor" to set the bones.
Although the new auditorium seated more than twice as many as the former structure it was filled to capacity the very first Sunday night. It had been so long since a religious group had outgrown their structure that people flocked in to see what was happening. In spite of our narrowness and provincialism, or perhaps because of it, the number of the disciples grew.
One of my favorite areas in "God's vineyard" was the Missouri Ozarks in the region around Springfield and south to the Arkansas line. I held my first meeting in "the Queen City of the Ozarks" when I was a mere lad. It was in a tent on North National Boulevard. After thus being introduced to the region I began to conduct meetings in rural areas off the beaten track. At Walnut Hill the community gave us an excellent hearing and I liked the place because after the evening services we could turn the dogs loose in the timber along the James River and go coon hunting the rest of the night. Here I also got my first taste of fox hunting.
It was during one of my visits to Springfield that brethren from Nixa, a village some twelve miles south, came to interview me to hold a three week gospel meeting for them. When I began on the third Sunday in September I inaugurated a custom that became an annual affair and continued until I had held thirteen meetings, baptizing some two hundred persons. In this little community of about three hundred population there were three or four religious edifices, but the largest was owned by the Church of Christ.
There were three elders -- John Bennett, Otis Stine and Jonas Parsons. The first-named had been a rural schoolteacher until retirement. Then he became president of the local bank and general advisor to the community. Since I stayed in his home during many of these meetings I became well acquainted with him and met scores of people who came to him to help them draw up legal documents and even to write letters for them, since some of them were virtually uneducated and could not "put their thoughts down on paper." The congregation was given prestige by the number of people who studied the Word every day and became proficient in it. A wealth of talent was developed and the congregation grew strong under the guidance of their shepherds.
Every year during our annual meeting I was invited to speak in a number of high schools in the area. I recall that a few of them had makeshift buildings and inadequate classroom facilities, but the concern of the teachers and their dedication to their profession made up for the physical lack. Some high school students were from such poverty-stricken homes they came to school barefoot, bringing lunch pails or sacks containing cold biscuits and sorghum molasses. No days were ever wasted during my three week preaching stints for people arranged meetings and announced them by word of mouth so that I spoke from the porches of country stores or at sawmills and grist mills where native people gathered. The men chewed tobacco and listened with gravity while the women held the children and heard me gladly.
When such meetings were not possible all of us gathered at the home where I was to eat the noonday meal, the women bringing food to spread together, and while there were no formal meetings we sat and talked together well into the afternoon. These were times of simple enjoyment where hearts were cemented together by the love of God and all of us grew in knowledge of the Book as we discussed controverted passages. They were especially profitable to me because of the simple unadorned lives of the people enriched by their constant contact with the divine revelation. Some years I stayed in a different home every night of the three weeks, and often I have blown out the kerosene lamp and tumbled into a bed where the tick was filled with straw or corn shucks, and slept like a log because of physical exhaustion.
The baptizing was done in the beautiful crystal-clear James River. One Sunday afternoon a huge audience gathered on the gravel bar to see twenty-three persons immersed into the relationship involved in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Often baptism was performed at night. Cars would be driven to the spot and parked so their lights could be focused on the river. Fish could be seen swimming in the depths. Night birds blended their plaintive calls with the songs of the believers.
Not all such gatherings were as peaceful as this. A year before Nell and I were married, I pitched a tent near Bull Creek and stayed a week by myself. I had been in the "Shepherd of the Hills" country, made famous by Harold Bell Wright, even prior to this, when I was seventeen. This was before the days of the tourist invasion and the only way to travel the region was in an old taxi driven by Mrs. Pearl Spurlock who lived in Branson and made daily trips through the area to accommodate people who stopped over between trains. Most of the roads were merely gravel-strewn trails and the sites featured by Wright were still existent.
Mutton Hollow was an unspoiled wilderness, and one could view its glory from Sammy Lane's Lookout. Preachin' Bill's barn stood to indicate where his log cabin had been and one could walk up "the trail nobody knows how old" to the cabin of Uncle Matt and Aunt Mollie. Uncle Ike, the postmaster at the crossroads, was still living, a bearded patriarch with a Harvard degree who chose to live in solitude but who was anxious enough to visit with me when I met him. The country got into my blood and I decided to go back and camp by myself away from any habitation, and think things out. I selected the right place. Every day I could see the blue haze dropping down on faraway hills and every evening while sitting by the campfire I could hear the eerie hoot of owls and the lonely cry of the whippoorwills.
I saw but two persons in the whole week. A couple of moonshiners came to investigate and assure themselves I was not a revenue agent searching for their stills. They cautioned me not to go up the hollow across the creek from my tent and ask questions afterward. When they learned I was a preacher they immediately proposed that I speak at the schoolhouse on Friday night since the community "hadn't heard no preachin' since God knowed when." They offered to "norate it around" so I consented.
I didn't realize that such occasions were usually used as an excuse for resumption of feuds although I noticed when the hour drew near for the meeting to begin a lot of the men were talking a little too loudly and the smell of liquid corn pervaded the air. The women and children went inside and so did a few of the men. The rest lounged around outside and their voices could be heard as I announced the first song. Since few knew it and there were no books, I sang but one verse. It was just as I was preparing to read an introductory chapter that someone outside called through an open window to a man inside, using an unmentionable epithet, and daring him to come outside. Without hesitation the one who was challenged climbed up on the seat and dived through the open window, knocking the prop out as he went.
In a matter of seconds the place was in an uproar with everyone pressing toward the door. Outside the drunken frenzied mob was already engaged in a free-swinging melee. It was not necessary to choose up sides. Everyone knew what side he was on when he arrived. Rocks flew freely. The moonlight glinted off the sharp blades of Barlow knives. When two sheriff's deputies arrived, those who could not walk were loaded into cars and taken to Branson to be sewed up.
Later I became good friends with some of the "feuders" who had served terms in the state penitentiary. One in particular was a mere lad when he and his father lay flat on their stomachs at the edge of their woods, resting rifles upon the fence rails to shoot down a neighbor and his two sons working in the field. They did it to fulfill a "blood oath" laid upon them by the boy's grandfather while he was dying from a gunshot wound. When I met the one-time boy he had "done his time" and had been released. He had married a girl from the hills and they welcomed me to their home. I baptized the whole family as well as some members of the opposite clan. When I was preaching anywhere within forty miles the former "sworn enemies" came together to hear me, bringing as many of their neighbors as they could get on the truck.
The year of 1931 was memorable in our lives for several reasons. For one thing, Nell again became pregnant and suffered a lot from nausea and discomfort during the summer months. We were fortunate that we had been virtually adopted by George and Minnie Kryselmier who not only came to get Jerry often because they adored him, but also had us at their house for meals with great regularity when George was home from a trip on the Missouri Pacific which he served as an engineer. Minnie was a superb cook with an old-fashioned flair and we would visit at the table for a long time unless there was a special radio program on WLS "the Prairie Farmer Station" in Chicago. Since we were too poor to own a radio ourselves, any specially announced program was an excuse to visit the Kryselmiers, who generally honored the arrangement by inviting us to eat with them. We never rejected the invitation.
It was in 1931 we bought our first house. A rather lovely six-room bungalow with a large porch in front became vacant and was offered for sale at $3,100.00 I had never been on a salary and never charged for my services. I simply took what the brethren gave me as I have continued to do through the years. At the time I was averaging about $25.00 per week and we had another baby on the way. But we wanted a place of our own, so we borrowed $300 for the initial payment from Nell's brother Arvel, and began the monthly payments which we continued more than ten years. Nell and I were both troubled about being in debt. To this day we dislike owing anyone anything "but to love one another" and we sense a real relief when a bill is paid.
It was early in the morning of December 10, 1931, that Nell awakened to tell me she had felt her first pains. At this time I had developed a better "husband image" and proceeded with arrangements with more method and less excitement than when Jerry was born twenty-seven months previously. I summoned Dr. Stanley Love, son of the man who delivered Jerry, and he arrived with greater alacrity than did his father. It was a good thing he did because Nell was in labor but little more than an hour when our baby girl joined the family circle to be given the previously agreed upon name of Sharon Sue. She weighed ten pounds, and Sister Edwards, who again helped us in this critical time, commented upon what a well-formed and happy baby she was right from the start.
Jerry suffered no emotional trauma because a new life had come to share the attention of his parents. We had carefully prepared him in advance until he experienced the same joyful anticipation as ourselves. When Sue was awake he would stand by her little bed and try to get her to smile at him. It was no great task as she was ready to do so with the least personal attention. Life again became a smoothly functioning routine for all of us except that Nell once more had to include the daily bathing of and attention to a chubby little cherubic being.
I sometimes wish I could omit this chapter but to do so would leave a void and create a distorted picture. I will deal with a division and my part in it, although division in the family of God has come to be so abhorrent to me I would like to forget my own unfortunate participation in it. In order to explain what happened I must give you a great deal of background. I do so with the realization it may not make sense to you. If you are patient enough to read it, however, you may be enabled to envision the role of personalities and their political maneuverings in the frightfully-divided Churches of Christ.
Although I did not realize it at the time I was baptized, this historical movement was already fractured into fragments because of the legalistic concept which had captured the minds of its adherents. Divisions do not happen. They are caused. Parties form around men who promote the separation and insist upon the segregation of their adherents. In the movement growing out of the ideal of restoration as enunciated by Thomas and Alexander Campbell, most of the divisions centered around men of prominence. In almost every instance they were editors of journals. They could use their journals as propaganda media and the United States mails as a distribution method. No party could long endure without an editor and a "loyal paper."
Isaac Errett wielded influence through Christian Standard. David Lipscomb edited Gospel Advocate. Austin McGary edited Firm Foundation. Daniel Sommer edited American Christian Review. The name of this paper was changed at various times to Octographic Review, Apostolic Review, and back again to American Christian Review. It was into the segment of "the disciple brotherhood" represented by the Apostolic Review I was introduced when baptized. At the time I did not know there were others. I supposed, in my childhood idealism, that all Christians were together, united in a common bond of faith, and that wherever you saw a meetinghouse with "Church of Christ" over the door you would find a welcome and a hand of fellowship to cheer you.
Daniel Sommer was a unique personality. Born of German immigrant parents, on January 11, 1850, he lived for ninety years, and formed a human bridge between the early restoration pioneers and my own time. He was contemporary with Alexander Campbell for sixteen years, and entered Bethany College four years after the death of its founder. A rather slow, but methodical student, he resolved to master the content of divine revelation and to proclaim it "without fear or favor." He viewed the spirit of departure from the original design of the scriptures as a sad and doleful commentary on the influence of pride and ambition among the disciples of Christ and began to raise his voice against the innovations he felt would make impossible the "return to the primitive order of things."
By the time he was forty years of age he was wielding a trenchant pen and a vigorous voice against the employment of "unlawful methods resorted to in order to raise money for religious purposes." He decried such things as bake sales, rummage sales, plays, performances and festivals. He attacked select choirs, instrumental music, missionary societies, and the "One man imported preacher-pastor to take the oversight of the church." It was his opposition to the developing clergy system which crystallized his objection to what he referred to as "so-called Christian colleges." Since David Lipscomb College and Abilene Christian College were both liberal arts schools, teaching nine-tenths secular subjects and one-tenth Bible, he deplored the designation Christian and coined the term "religio-secular institutions" to describe them.
I have in my possession a yellowed sheet listing exactly a hundred errors of "the new digressives" as he labeled defenders of the colleges to distinguish them from the "old digressives" who endorsed instrumental music and missionary societies. But I think his main objection lay in the charge that the colleges were "preacher factories," taking "beardless youths" whose chief claim to fame was "a gift of gab" and who, after receiving a certain amount of polish and a degree, could hire themselves out by the year to minister to churches for a set fee. He believed such a system would make the churches dependent upon hirelings, and instead of developing a well-trained militia, would so weaken the saints they would have to secure mercenaries to defend themselves against assaults of the enemy.
So formidable was his attack that before 1890 it was decided to "call the hand" of "the digressives" and fling down the gauntlet. The place chosen was the Sand Creek meetinghouse, a rural setting but a few miles from Windsor, Illinois. Here each year huge audiences gathered for a homecoming. A special train ran from Chicago, picking up people enroute. Several thousand gathered for the famous weekend. On August 17, 1889 Daniel Sommer stood up to read a document he had written. He called it "An Address and Declaration" which was a take-off on "The Declaration and Address" of Thomas Campbell penned exactly eighty years before.
It was a protest against "objectionable and unauthorized things taught and practiced in many congregations." It listed four specific "corrupt practices." Instrumental music was not one of them. The thesis closed with these words: "All such that are guilty of teaching, or allowing and practicing the many innovations and corruptions to which we have referred, and after being admonished, and having had sufficient time for reflection, if they do not turn away from such abominations, that we cannot and will not regard them as brethren."
From now on the die was cast. Although the missionary society had been organized fifty years before, and instrumental music introduced forty years before, for the first time they became an open and formal test of fellowship. Representatives from five congregations affixed their signatures, not realizing that in so doing they were formulating a creed by which brotherhood was to be reckoned. A rash of court suits broke out to secure the property and in many of these Brother Sommer was called to act as a witness and testify against what he called "modern schoolmen."
Hardly had some degree of calm been restored by mutual exclusiveness, when those who deplored the use of the instrument were plunged into another bitter contest. This time the point of contention was "the religio-secular college." The Western Bible and Literary College had been planted at Odessa, Missouri and since there was strong opposition to it by many congregations in the area two debates were arranged between B.F. Rhodes and Daniel Sommer. These were held at Odessa and Hale, Missouri. As a result, J.N. Armstrong, who was president of the school, challenged Brother Sommer to a written examination of the issue.
Twenty essays were presented by each writer in a debate which began on March 15, 1907 and carried over into the year I was born. The written discussion was marked with bitterness and interspersed with accusations and counter-accusations. On page 299, Brother Sommer wrote: "About six years ago I began, with much reluctance, to oppose a certain class of colleges, for they had been projected by men whom I supposed to be my brethren. But I have tested six of them, and have proved them to be reckless of truth, on the college question, and slanderers of me personally. As a result I cannot regard them as brethren, and do not so designate them except through force of habit in form of expression."
In closing his part of the discussion, Brother Armstrong said: "He is trying to divide a people who are as nearly one in doctrine as it is possible for true, loyal hearts to be; a people who are one on every question of religion save in their misunderstandings of the teachings of Christ. . . . Could he do it, brother Sommer would lead the Octographic Review readers, a small company compared to the great body of disciples that advocate the schools, to reject as Christians this body of disciples, notwithstanding it stands with the Octographic Review on nearly every other question discussed in the Church of God. Following such a principle every preacher in the Church would build up his individual sect."
At the time I was convinced that "the Octographic Review family" was the body of Christ to the exclusion of all others. There were real problems. Any party dominated by a strong personality, regardless of the sincerity of that person, treads a narrow line and walks on thin ice. The publishers of the Apostolic Review could wield a powerful influence on men and congregations and did so. Division is a natural result of such an arrangement. In Long Beach, California, men who were powerful preachers came under suspicion -- A.M. Morris, W.P. Reedy, Ralph C. Yadon, Stephen and Silas Settle. Charges were preferred and a disgraceful scene enacted in the Long Beach meetinghouse where rival factions held meetings simultaneously and tried to "sing each other down."
The "brethren out west" as they came to be known, started their own paper, a rival journal to "the Review," and those who supported the latter regarded the other as traitors. They were referred to as "the Long Beach element" or "the Morris faction." The charge against them was that they had "gone soft on the pastor system" and were hiring preachers at a stipulated salary to take over the pulpits. Men who had been regarded as "faithful" for years were suddenly branded and no longer called for meetings.
To complicate matters further, trouble began to surface in the Sommer family, not a new thing. Because one could not get a "clergy certificate" for reduced rates on the railroads if he derived part of his income from the sale of books or from editing a paper, Daniel Sommer placed the editorship of the paper in the hands of his wife. Her name appeared appeared on the masthead for years -- Mrs. K.W. Sommer, Editor. She did not take her position lightly and when her husband became involved in a church trouble in the west she cut him out of the paper and refused to print his articles. "There was no small stir," as the inspired writer would phrase it.
Even before that happened, D. Austen, a son who resented having been left off of the family editorial staff, started his own paper which he designated the Macedonian Call. In it he frequently slated articles at the Review and when his mother died, and his two brothers and one sister (Chester, Allen and Bessie) took over, he increased his attacks. Because he was traveling much of the time as a preacher he found an opportunity to sow the seeds of doubt about the moral, spiritual and scriptural soundness of his brothers, and a great many long-time readers became suspicious. They watched the paper carefully for indications of a trend away from the traditional views. In 1932 they thought they had found such indications.
The June 21, 1932 issue carried an article simply signed "Review Publishers" and entitled "Can't We Agree on Something?" It began with the words, "To those of the Churches of Christ who desire a plan for Unity, we submit the following for your consideration." Fifteen points which had been controversial were discussed. The document proposed that colleges, orphan homes, and societies be disassociated from congregational relationships and maintained by individuals. "The Church Contribution is not for that purpose." It suggested that the "Church Contribution" be used for "spreading the Gospel and taking care of the poor."
Each congregation would decide for itself how much preaching or mutual edification it would have. Bible classes were not to be organized into separate departments, and those who opposed them could stay away from them without censure. Actually, the statement was somewhat innocuous and tame when looked at in retrospect, but it became explosive in the atmosphere in which it was launched. No sooner did it hit the mail than D. Austen Sommer zeroed in upon it and called for all "loyalists" to rally round the flag to do or die for the cause we loved.
Although the publishers of the Review replied to the attack by saying it was simply a rough draft of suggestions intended to encourage a restudy of our divided state with a hope of alleviating it, the opposers (of whom I was one of the most vocal) labeled it a written creed. The description of it by the publishers gave us a handle and we called it "The Rough Draft" and this made it possible to identify the supporters and the denouncers of it. Daniel Sommer disclaimed any knowledge of the composition of the document but came to its defense when he became aware of the rabid opposition.
His intervention did not help. D. Austen Sommer said his father was in his dotage and had become soft on the issues because of his age. He pointed out that Alexander Campbell had done the same thing with the missionary society, but Daniel reminded everyone that when Campbell embraced the society he was the same age as D. Austen. Everywhere there were cries that the Review had betrayed the church and "let down the bars so the college preachers could come in and wreck everything, including the faith."
I was twenty-four years old when the storm broke and in my partisan enthusiasm was the one who accepted the challenge of the 82 year old Daniel to debate the issue. Fortunately, the debate did not materialize, but in our correspondence he expressed his sadness that I manifested so much zeal with so little knowledge. He also told me he had hoped his mantle would fall on my shoulders, and that he had earlier thought of Austen as his successor, but was disappointed that he had proven himself to be "a splinter off the butt-cut of humanity."
The situation of the Sommer family became more intense. All communication between D. Austen and the others broke down. Meanwhile the cry was raised among us to force every preacher to take a stand on the "Rough Draft" and to publicly declare himself. In many articles the quotation appeared, "Mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you have learned." In others we were reminded, "If any man come and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, and neither bid him Godspeed."
With such a spirit rampant among us, division became inevitable. Separation was regarded as the will of God. Maintenance of purity of doctrine by segregation from the compromisers was urged upon every side. The agitation for a mass meeting to be held in a central location to deal with the question became almost universal. There were no doubt some cool heads who cautioned care but they were in the minority and they were shouted down. We wanted action. It was time to show your colors, to put up or shut up! The day for deliberation was past. I think I was one of the ringleaders and I stayed in the thick of the fray by letters and articles. Parties must have "issues" to survive and in the absence of real ones they create their own!
The stage was set for a gathering of preachers and other interested persons to discuss what steps should be taken to unite our forces against the "Rough Draft." Kansas City was a central location. An invitation was extended by the elders at 26th and Spruce Streets to use their facilities. W.E. Ballenger, a widely recognized preacher and a member of the congregation presided over most of the meetings. Man after man mounted the platform to speak against "the departure from the faith" of the Review publishers.
It was generally agreed the Review was gone. The time had come to look elsewhere for "brotherhood leadership." Since the Macedonian Call was already being published and D. Austen Sommer had stood firm against his brothers we decided to back his journalistic effort. Those who continued to write for or report through the columns of the Review would be regarded as having departed from the faith. A document entitled "The Rough Draft -- Its Sponsors -- Also Its Outworkings -- Why We Are Against It" was drawn up by D. Austen Sommer. A great many men signed it. Like John Hancock, I wrote my name big and bold. I also collaborated with Brother Sommer in drawing up another paper analyzing "the Rough Draft" and urging all who loved the Lord to lift up their voices against it.
Our action served to create another schism in an already divided movement. It also doomed the exclusivistic Sommer faction to death. Our actions were injudicious and our reactions unwarranted. I was wrong in what I did. A lot of things I wrote and said in the time of tension were absurd. I do not try to excuse them on the basis of youthful immaturity. I was sectarian in attitude and filled with pharisaic pride. I helped to create another arrogant and hostile party even though I acted in all good conscience. That I became a recognized leader in it was a tribute to my dogmatism and aggressiveness. I am ashamed of both of them. They only added to the sin.
If we had regarded the so-called "Rough Draft" as merely another newspaper article and allowed people to read it for themselves without trying to inject political prejudice into their minds it would not have caused a ripple. But when we took up our cudgels and attempted to beat brethren into submission we made a grievous error. It was a sin to call a general meeting in Kansas City for the purpose which prompted it. And it was a sin to create another party among those in the undivided Christ. That it fell my lot to become a "chief of sinners" in promoting the resultant mess is no comfort.
Legalistic sects secure no peace by division. So long as the spirit which prompted and encouraged the division remains, they only lay the groundwork for additional strife. Before it was all over Brother D. Austen Sommer, motivated by fear of the growing popularity of Mission Messenger which I published, became increasingly hostile to my work and refused to even meet with me to effect a reconciliation. When I laid my whole sectarian spirit down before the Conqueror of my person and heart, some of the brethren with whom I had long been associated as a champion, took up arms against me, regarding me as a Benedict Arnold or a Judas Iscariot. They were acting as sincerely as I had acted when I engaged in the same tactics and they were employing toward me the methods I had taught them by precept and example. One should not complain too much if he is fed from a spoon he polished himself. But there is something wrong about a system which breeds jealousy and envy instead of love, and which forces us to reject those who grow closer to Jesus, while accepting those who stagnate or wither on the vine!
Our new association flourished. Some of the most outstanding preachers of the gospel in the 1930's were a part of it. They were men who knew the Book and were powerful proclaimers of its message. There was no dearth of congregations and they were scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In Missouri alone there were 120 congregations with which we could labor. Our cause was relatively strong in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio. We were now "the faithful church" as distinguished from the "Rough Drafters." We were separated from each other by a newspaper article and the interpretation we placed upon its value. It is of such fragile cobwebs that sects are born with the strands being reinforced by human pride, fear and stubbornness.
It was during this period I was called upon to make a decision which would affect the remainder of my life. I went to St. Louis to conduct meetings for the brethren who met at 7121 Manchester Avenue. There were two meetings, each of two weeks duration. The first was in the autumn of 1934, and there was such an ingathering of souls that, after the meeting ended the brethren had to remodel the building and install a balcony to take care of the increased attendance. While I was there the leaders approached me about moving to the city which was known as "The Gateway to the West." They wanted me to labor with them by personal visitation to build up the cause. I promised to think about it but the bigness and noise of the city with its frightening influence had little appeal to me.
During the next two years the labors in Nevada and the harvest field were very satisfying and rewarding. Our children were growing and the relationship with the saints was pleasant and encouraging. In spite of this the suggestion planted by the brethren in St. Louis was beginning to appeal to my sense of purpose.
The congregation in St. Louis began with five women who had moved to the city from rural areas. The leading light was Bertha Robinson who came from north Missouri. With the help of her sister Mabel she began the work. Nell and I are agreed that, of all the people we have ever met, Bertha Robinson was the most saintly. Neither she nor her sister ever married, but both were truly wedded to the Lord and to Him gave their unstinted devotion. They did home baking for a select clientele and were famous for their cakes and cookies which graced many parties given by the socially elite.
When they moved to the city they never missed a Lord's Day of remembrance of Jesus. They set the Lord's Table in their home and were led to find three other sisters who had gone to the city and who met with them. Realizing that many would not meet in a home they decided to rent an upstairs hall on Vandeventer Avenue. They placed a modest advertisement in the classified section of the Saint Louis papers, alternating in the three news journals. Every Sunday Bertha prepared the items for the Lord's Supper and carried them on the streetcar to the meeting site. Here the five women sang hymns, prayed, studied the Word, and encouraged one another in the Lord. For weeks they petitioned God to send them a brother who could help by conducting the meetings.
The first man to attend was Edward Burtchinger, a Swiss gardener and yard man who had been brought to the United States to care for the grounds of a large estate. He was more of a problem than a help. He could not do anything in the public meetings and did not believe the women should. Bertha Robinson questioned him about every item in turn, but he could not sing, would not teach, and contributed only his presence and objections. The women, confronted with the dilemma of offending God or man, quickly reached a decision. They continued to carry on the meetings as before. Brother Burtchinger still attended.
The first real break came when Robert Morrow moved to the city from near Dixon, Missouri, having been reared in the faith in a rural congregation where all participated, he was capable of edifying and exhorting. With his advent others soon followed. The little group multiplied in number until they decided to purchase a place of their own. They soon learned of the meetinghouse at 7121 Manchester, located one block from the city limits, and with excellent trolley service from all sections of the city. This was an important consideration in a day when few families owned automobiles.
I first spoke for the brethren there when I was still a "boy preacher" and was passing through the city enroute to a meeting in the Lead Belt area. When I came back in 1934, which was eleven years later, I was 26 years old. The congregation was growing in numbers and in knowledge of the truth. There was an array of talent and I have seldom seen such a wealth of teaching and speaking ability. Robert Morrow lived next door to the meetinghouse and acted as a wise counselor. He was aided by a number of brethren who had gravitated to the city from Missouri and Illinois -- Wilson, Thompson, Bilyeu, Janes, Smith, Baldwin, and many others, capable proclaimers of the Word. The greatest asset, however, was the number of young married couples, and the alert and spiritually aggressive young people, many of them still in high school.
The brethren wanted me to come for two reasons. First, they held the concept that congregations should be small and active, keeping every member occupied and busy in spiritual things. They wanted me to train every man to function in whatever capacity he could, and when the congregation attained to approximately 150 in regular attendance, take 30 or 40 and plant them as a nucleus in a new locality. They spoke of moving into the world by colonization, with the idea that the original congregation would supply the new group whatever was necessary until they could stand on their own feet.
As we discussed it, they used the illustration of a strawberry plant which puts out runners on all sides and starts new plants, until eventually a garden plot is covered and the fruit is abundant. The idea was not to erect huge material buildings, but to keep them small, and when the congregation outgrew the facilities, to plant a new one rather than to "tear down the barns and build greater." Repeatedly it was said that when bees fill a hive they swarm and the number of hives increase as a result. It was believed that so long as the brethren could maintain a family feeling, visiting one another in their homes and in hospitals, all sharing together at picnics and basket dinners, there would be less loss by attrition and desertion.
All of the men, some of whom were skilled in business and held trusted executive positions, felt that the same principles which were being used to weld together into a team the workers in industry, could be applied in modified form to build a congregation into a fighting unit in the army of the Lord. As they outlined it, my work as an evangelist, would be to go with each new group that was planted, remaining to teach and train them until they could function on their own. When bishops had been developed, selected by the saints, and ordained to function, my work in that congregation would end. I would then be free to go elsewhere and duplicate the process.
There was a general consensus that nothing could weaken a congregation quite so much as hiring a man to do the work which God ordained for all the members, and while rapid numerical growth would be experienced by such a method, it would amount to increasing the number of weak and dependent members whose trust was more in man than in God. My task would be with new congregations where I would work myself out by working others in.
Secondly, the brethren felt that my knowledge and insights, which they greatly over-estimated, should be made available on a wider scale so that young men could be imbued with a desire to take the Good News to a world of suffering mankind and could be trained for more effective service in their communities. It was proposed that I teach an annual Bible Study to which men and women might come without charge for enrollment or tuition. In connection with such a study I would teach public speaking, vocabulary expansion and word studies, employing the Bible as the only textbook.
The prospect was appealing since many congregations had young people of promise who were anxious to learn the word of God more perfectly. It appeared to be an opportunity to strengthen the future potential leadership of the churches. I had already decided I would like to have our children reared in a large city environment where they could have cultural benefits not available in a more restricted area. St. Louis was a historic spot which attracted men and women seeking jobs, from every section of the Missouri Ozarks, as well as from states like Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee.
What I did not realize at the time was that we were considering becoming a part of the restless current flowing from rural areas to urban centers and that we would be on the cutting-edge of a tremendous national transformation which would eventually upset and destroy many of the traditions we had cherished. It seemed wise to move because I could better promote the cause to which I was dedicated. As I talked with the brethren the question of support arose. I expressed my opposition to making a contract or having agreement on a fixed salary. I told them I was willing to come and they could provide for my needs as they saw fit. One of them said, "You make the move and we promise you we will not allow Nell and the children to starve." It was the only financial agreement we ever had.
In years to come as they attempted to give me increasing amounts I repeatedly refused them accepting only what was essential to meet our immediate needs. When they insisted on exceeding this, Nell and I simply returned it to the congregation with our thanks. I felt that if I took more than our need required, God would cease to bless us. I did not want to become a "peddler of the gospel." I wanted to share what I had to offer and I was content for the brethren to "share with him that teacheth in all good things."
I suspect now that my decision to move was a traumatic experience for Nell but if it was she kept it in her heart. We liked Nevada. We liked our simple house. We loved the people very deeply. It was heartbreaking to leave them. Many of the older ones wept, thinking they would see our faces no more. They were especially reluctant to give up Jerry and Sue and imagined all sorts of dire things which would happen to them in the city. The whole congregation felt a kind of proprietary interest in the children.
Our plans to move were complicated somewhat by the fact that I was to become involved in my first major debate. I had previously engaged in skirmishes of a local nature and had probably become too fond of this kind of thing. I had gone looking for "trouble" at tent meetings of various kinds and had gloried in the fact that sometimes the Pentecostals had threatened to call the police and have me arrested.
Now I was to meet Rue Porter, a brother of renown, especially in southern Missouri and Arkansas. He was a skillful tactician on the forensic platform. Men who knew him well and who were on his side, predicted he would skin me alive and hang my pelt on the barn door. I regarded all such prophecies as a part of the "psyching process" practiced on opponents. But since this was the beginning of numerous battles I will give a fuller account in my next chapter.