Category: All Articles

Staying True for a Century

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Education

–Winter of 2000

Staying True for a Century

In 1899 General William Booth of the Salvation Army made the following prediction about the Twentieth Century: “I’m of the opinion that the dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.”

I don’t believe anyone who has kept abreast of mainstream Protestantism in America would argue with the accuracy of General Booth’s prophecy.  The truth is that many Protestant denominations have drifted much further into apostasy than even General Booth predicted.

But it is also true that there are churches, organizations, institutions and individuals who have held true to vital Christianity and the fundamentals of the faith.  It would be a profitable study to trace the road to apostasy and ruin that so many have taken.  However, I believe it to be an even more profitable study to trace the steps of those who have remained true over the years.

God’s Bible School and College is celebrating 100 years of service to the holiness movement this year.  For 100 years this school has remained true to its original mission, purpose and doctrinal statement.  That is, indeed, a great accomplishment!  The question I’ve asked myself so many times is how and why did this institution stay the course for 100 years?  As I’ve given it some thought, I believe there are five basic reasons why GBS has remained true to its God-given assignment over this last century.

God has retained ownership

When Martin Wells Knapp purchased the original property, he had the deed made out to “God the Father.”  The early camp advertisements listed the workers as “God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.”  Some of the earliest school brochures listed the superintendent of the school as “God the Father.”  The earliest mission statement read, “This is a home for God’s children where they may come and find His will and then equip for His service.”  This language was not the mere spiritual prattle of a group of religious fools touting their piety.  They meant every word of it!  From the earliest days to this very day, there has been on this campus a keen sense of God’s ownership of this institution.

I well remember early in my presidency how God taught me a lesson that that was His school.  I found out from the business office on Wednesday that the following Monday we would have to have around $88,000 by 5:00 p.m.  The daily cash sheet showed that we had around $2,000 in the bank.  We were in the heart of the summer slump, and I had no idea what to do.  When the men left my office, I walked out from behind my desk, got down on my knees before God with the intention of praying and fasting through the noon hour.  No sooner had my knee touched the rug than God spoke, saying, “Stand still and see My salvation.  Get up from here, go home, wash your face and lighten your countenance.  I’m going to meet this need and show you this is My school.”  God did exactly that.  Before Monday at 5:00 p.m. every penny of that money was in our hands.  I couldn’t tell you the times that I’ve received a note from a faithful constituent telling me that God spoke to them about giving a particular amount to the school and it would be just exactly what we needed to meet a need.

There are events in our history that were not God-ordained or God-honored.  The foolishness of men brought the school down to the very brink of closure.  As a matter of fact, the courts had already appointed an officer to liquidate the assets and close the doors.  But God had other plans and He gave saintly Sister Peabody the promise of Joshua 1:3 while in prayer.  She left her room and started walking the campus, reclaiming it for God.  The rest is history.  During those dark days God kept doing His work on campus, turning out students like Jewel Stetler, Grover Blankenship, Arthur Travis, Earl Weddle, Wingrove Taylor, Paul Lucas and Arnie Sypolt, along with some of the largest classes in the school’s history.

Those who have been involved in the life of this institution over the past 100 years would agree that there has been an unusual sense of God’s ownership and presence on this campus.

GBS has been able to maintain a balance between an emphasis upon spiritual life and academic excellence

There is probably no other school comparable in size that has turned out more preachers and missionaries who are clearly marked by an emphasis upon prayer, faith and the leadership of the Holy Spirit than GBS.  In interview after interview, GBS students will tell you about miraculous answers to prayer while here on this campus and in the years that followed through their ministry.  They will talk to you about an emphasis upon faith that they learned here as a student.  They will share stories of the leadership of the Holy Spirit that brought them here, that kept them here and sent them forth.  They reflect upon their student days as a time when they were instructed as well as mentored in what a real vital prayer life should be, how to discern the voice of the Spirit and how to have faith for the smallest necessities of life.  Our students are interested in homiletics, but they are also challenged and shown what it means to wrap their heart around a text of Scripture and let it burn until the congregation knows their heart is on fire.  They are trained to take certain tools and exegete a particular passage, but they also must know what it means to get into the Word of God until they meet the Living Word.  They know the value of training their voice so as to sing in an acceptable manner, but they also know the value of preparing their heart until when they sing, they do so with the anointing of the Lord.

GBS has always had a staff and faculty that saw the advancement of God’s cause more important than their own material gain

In the early days of the school, no one received a salary.  And since the days that salaries began, no one has ever been remunerated their real worth.  Faculty and staff who have gathered here on this Hilltop have had one unifying conviction, namely, God called them here and God would provide for their needs.  When I look back over 100 years and see all the thousands of students that have been trained by such a sacrificial faculty, I recall the words of Winston Churchill when he said, “Never in the course of history has so much been owed by so many to so few.”  Those words are so true when you think of the faculty and staff who have labored here for so little.  They gave themselves to something that was bigger than their own personal needs and God has used their commitment to keep this institution on course.  Probably there is no greater reason for the continuation of this school than its godly faculty and staff.

GBS has been able to preserve its core identity

The leadership of this institution has had the ability to understand who we are and why we exist.  The school has been able to change without changing.  GBS is a Bible college in the holiness tradition and has been for 100 years.  Many things have changed on this Hilltop—facilities, programs and methods of operation—but our core identity and values are the same as they were 100 years ago.

I believe there are three reasons we’ve been able to maintain our core identity: The first is, at the heart of every degree is a solid Bible core.  That has not changed and will not change.  Second, GBS has always been strong in its emphasis on solid Wesleyan theology, particularly from a systematic approach.  A systematic theology class here is not a class that tosses out a number of ideas about God and allows students to choose the theory they prefer.  Nor is it a class to guide them into what they want to think about God.  It is a class on what they should think about God.  It has been the philosophy of the theology teachers here over the years, particularly Dr. Wilcox, that there is a body of truth that needed to be imparted to young preachers and theologians, and it was the job of the teacher to impart that body of truth.  Some have called it mastering the minimum.  Consequently, GBS graduates have left here with an outstanding grasp of what Wesleyan theology is all about.  Some have ridiculed that approach and said GBS just turned out cookie-cutter preachers who didn’t know how to think for themselves.  To the contrary, I accept that ridicule as a compliment.  GBS has consistently turned out more holiness preachers than any other school, hands down.  Another interesting fact that has been the result of this emphasis is that GBS has had an unbelievably low attrition rate into denominations of other theological persuasions.  GBS has sent pastors into all sorts of denominations within the Methodist and Wesleyan tradition, but hardly any have filtered into non-Wesleyan denominations.  When a student left GBS, they left an adherent of holiness doctrine.  The final reason is that GBS has always had a faculty and staff that role modeled and mentored the students in holiness ethics, values and lifestyle issues.

GBS has been able to remain focused because it has consistently promoted personal evangelism as the very heart of the Christian life

No one has ever remained a student at this school for four years without being confronted with the claims and the cause of personal evangelism.  The unique location of GBS in Cincinnati and at the heart of the holiness movement has kept it at the forefront of outreach in many areas.  Those students in the early days well remember the street meetings, the home visitation teams, marching down the street with placards and meeting in Cincinnati Gardens for mass evangelistic campaigns.  They remember loading up a large truck and going out for personal work, the old Salvation Boat, Thanksgiving dinners, and the G.I.’s of the Cross.  More recent students remember the inner city missions, the traveling quartets and gospel teams, street meetings, Good News Clubs, personal witnessing teams, jail ministry teams and home Bible studies.  President Standley is probably the one most responsible for breathing a passion for personal evangelism into the very fabric of GBS.  That passion lives on!  If you visited our campus this week you would still witness students going out in any of a half dozen ministries, sharing the good news that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

I don’t have the prophetic ability or the clear eye of a General Booth to tell you what the Twenty-First Century holds.  But I do know this, by the grace of God, I want to stay focused on what really matters so that when the Twenty-Second Century rolls around, whoever is writing on the President’s Page can look back and say that GBS is still true to the faith after 200 years.

It’s Time to Sing!

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living, Church, Theology

–December of 1999

It’s Time to Sing!

The year 2000 marks the beginning of a new millennium.  Crossing this threshold of time will prove to be an extraordinary moment for the church.  Two thousand years have passed since the birth of the Son of God in Bethlehem’s lowly manger, yet that birth still remains the defining moment of all history.  The church has steadily marched forward and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it.  The unfolding centuries have brought peril and persecution but the blood of the martyrs has proven to be the seed of the church.  After 2000 years we can joyfully proclaim that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever!  This alone ought to have the church singing as it makes its way into the new millennium.

Yet my sense is that most of the church is far from jubilant.  At the moment, the steady drum beat of the Y2K fear mongers have many looking for a reasonably comfortable cave, stocked with an ample supply of dried food and pure water.  Others are depressed by a culture that mocks Christian values.  They rightfully fear the violence, vulgarity, meanness and instability that is endangering our communities and sliding civilization into barbarism.  To make matters worse, much of the church has reacted by retreating to the safety of their religious subculture which has served only to privatize and marginalize their Christian witness.

It may be that the church strolls along with a heavy heart and a downcast look because it has forgotten something that the early church knew all too well.  It has forgotten the warning of Jesus in John 16:33.  Before Jesus left his disciples, he made it clear to them that tribulation is unavoidable, “In the world you shall have tribulation.”  This fundamental truth seems to rub the fur of the modern church the wrong way.  The early church understood it and counted it all joy when they suffered for Jesus’ sake.  When Ridley and Latimer were burned at the stake during the English reformation, Latimer cried to Ridley, “Have faith, Master Ridley.  Today we shall light a fire that will illuminate the world!”  Early Methodists faced hostile mobs, stonings and brutal beatings.  They accepted it as a part of confronting a fallen culture with the claims of Christ.  Today’s church around the world still offers more martyrs than any time in history.  The saints of all ages have faced trying times.  Jesus said that tribulation was unavoidable and we would do well to remember His words.

The trials that the church has endured have also proven true the words of Jesus that peace is available, “In me ye might have peace.”  I know of no amount of grace that makes a child of God look forward to difficulty, but there is His promised peace.  There is grace to help us keep our heads up and our hearts singing during the darkest of times.  After weeks in a concentration camp, Corrie Ten Boom asked her sister Betsy why God had allowed this to happen to them.  Betsy responded, “So that when we get out of here we can tell the world that there is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”

Jesus also reminded us in this same verse that victory is inevitable.  “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”  The century we are about to close has done its dead level best to secularize, demoralize and destroy everything Christians hold dear.  Yet secularism, modernism and radical individualism have given the world nothing but emptiness and despair.  These philosophies have created a moral and spiritual vacuum which may well serve as the catalyst to launch the greatest move of God in the history of civilization.  The church must be ready to seize the moment!  This isn’t the time to hide in caves or adorn ourselves in the garb of a Puddleglum.  We haven’t the emotional coinage to spend fretting about what might happen.  This may be our finest hour!  So, children of God, look up!  Victory is ours!  Strike up the music!  It is time for the church to sing again!

A Heritage of Spiritual Reality

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living

–November of 1999

A Heritage of Spiritual Reality

I recently enjoyed a wonderful afternoon visit with my good friends Murl and Dorothy Patterson. At 88, Brother Patterson is still strong, active and very proud of his family’s heritage. His grandparents came to this country from Germany and finally put their roots down in Nebraska, settling a short distance south of the Platte River. Brother Patterson’s eyes sparkle as he recounts their stories of meeting Indians, working with the railroad, buying a farm and building it up through hard work. His parents staked their own claim about one mile further west and bought a farm bordering the Platte, right on top of the Oregon Trail. The Pattersons still live on that farm and in the same house where he was born 88 years ago. When you look at the beautiful farm and the hundreds of acres of corn and alfalfa, the huge barns and massive equipment, you realize it took three generations to conquer, tame and mold this farm into what it is today. Though Brother Patterson has put an unbelievable amount of genius and hard work into developing this farm, he would be the first to tell you the farm is what it is today because he could stand on the shoulders of those who came before him.

As proud as Brother Patterson is of the family farm, there is one thing he feels even more deeply about; that is his spiritual heritage. When he speaks of the farm, his eyes sparkle. When he speaks of his grandparents’ and his parents’ love for God and zeal for the church, his voice breaks, his eyes moisten, his attitude reflects deep reverence. In his memory, he is walking on holy ground. He tells of hearing his grandmother pray in the grove, “Lord, save my family and bless them down to the third and fourth generation.” He recounts how his parents helped to start the Sunday school at the Methodist Episcopal Church, and how his dad was later the president of the Western Holiness Association. He recounts wonderful stories of camp meetings with the great holiness preachers of the past. He loves to relive the altar services, the singing and the fellowship.

His grandmother’s prayer has been answered. The lines have fallen to the Pattersons in pleasant places. The faith that was found in his grandparents and his parents can still be found both in him and his children. The light still shines.

Handing down to each generation a heritage of spiritual reality is so important. The greatest gift and inheritance we can give a generation that will follow is the influence and memory of a life well-lived for God, the testimony of a clear conscience and of faith that is real and sincere. Nothing else will really last; nothing else will really matter.

The Old Testament emphasized the importance of each generation serving as a link to spiritual reality. Isaac spoke of the God of his father Abraham.  Jacob spoke of the God of Abraham and Isaac. The children of Israel spoke of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Paul wrote to Timothy and charged him not to break faith with his heritage. He admonished him to keep alive the heritage of spiritual reality that was first found in his grandmother Lois and then in his mother Eunice. Timothy could build on that heritage and pass it on to another generation, or he could lose it for coming generations.

Each generation must discover God for themselves. Yet, we can point the way and allow them to build on a heritage of faithfulness.

Guardians and Gardeners

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Church, Culture

–October of 1999

Guardians and Gardeners

To prepare my mind for a sermon I was to preach on Freshman Sunday, I decided to walk with the Apostle Paul on his last earthly journey.  I joined Paul as he gave his farewell to the Ephesian elders and started for Jerusalem.  I left him in chains at Rome.  As I traveled with him, I listened very closely to what would be his final words.  Emotion filled his exhortations to faithfulness as well as his warnings against false teachers and moral perversity.  Yet one theme kept surfacing.  Paul again and again reminded young Timothy of his responsibility to “guard” that which had been committed to him.  Paul left Timothy and me with a clear understanding that we have been entrusted with a guardianship—guardianship which demands that we must be willing to lay down our life for the truths of the gospel and spiritual reality.  However, as I read closer, I saw that Paul meant more than just standing like a sentry over scriptural revelation and doctrinal truth.  He meant more than just being a watchdog agency over orthodoxy.  To Paul our “guardianship” would also include a “gardenership.”

Dr. Theodore Kalsbeek, a prominent Cincinnati minister, helped me to see this in a story he recently told of a Russian czar who came upon a sentry standing at attention in a secluded portion of his palace garden.  Seeing no particular reason for having a sentry stationed at that particular place in the garden, he asked the sentry what he was guarding.  The young man replied, “I don’t know, sir.  I was ordered to my post by the Captain of the Guard.”  When the czar asked the Captain of the Guard, he could give no other reason than the simple fact that the regulations called for it.  The czar went to the archives and searched for the origin of the command.  He discovered that many years earlier Catherine the Great had planted a rose bush at that place in the garden and ordered a sentry to be posted beside it to protect it from being trampled.  The rose bush has been dead for over 100 years but the regulation to guard it remained.

This colorful story out of Russian history makes a forceful point for the church today.  Like Catherine’s rose bush, the church could die despite the presence of a sentry.  It is certainly true that the church needs guardians.  It is equally true that the church must have gardeners.  Watching is not enough.  There must be workers that nurture and build the church.  It is also equally true that the church needs guardians who know clearly what they are watching over.

Finding this balance has been difficult for the church.  Historically, every time the church has made the preservation of orthodoxy its focus, it has become scrutinizing, loveless, divisive, intolerant and legalistic.  In its effort to defend and purify itself it has usually only succeeded in destroying itself.

On the other hand, when the church has neglected its role as guardian for the sake of outreach, it has often become accommodating, compromising, worldly, and shallow—characteristics which have been the breeding ground for all forms of heresy.

John R.W. Stott, commenting on this problem, said, “It is easy to be faithful if you don’t care about being contemporary.  It is also easy to be contemporary if you don’t care about being faithful.”  The church must find the balance.  It must be both a guardian and a gardener.

Job’s Real Pain

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living, Theology

–September of 1999

Job’s Real Pain

I’ve been pondering over the pages of Job lately.  The portrait that is painted of Job in the first five verses of chapter one is of rare beauty.  Job’s faith is expressed as perfect and complete.  His family was the envy of every parent.  His fortune was the largest in the East, and his fame was world renowned.  Job’s life is portrayed on a canvas of perfect tranquility.

In the course of time, Satan was allowed to paint his own gruesome scene into Job’s life.  In successive strokes of calamity, Job’s peaceful world was turned into utter chaos.  The first blow to fall was the loss of his financial empire.  It was the second blow, however, that took away his greatest treasure—ten wonderful children.  Job was staggered by these vicious blows, but he was still able to hold his head up and declare his faith in God.  All Job had to say was “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Satan was given permission to test Job further, but this time he could touch him physically.  Job was smitten with a type of leprosy known as elephantiasis.  Massive ulcerous sores covered his body.  His limbs were so swollen he became disfigured and unrecognizable.  He was forced to sit as an outcast on the rubbish heap.  His wife counseled him to curse God and die, while his friends could only sit and watch in stunned silence.

In the beginning of his affliction, Job defended God by acknowledging that we must accept the bad as well as the good from His hand.  In contemporary expression, Job understood that trouble eventually knocks at everyone’s door.  As days turned to weeks and months, Job began to feel that trouble had not only knocked, but literally had banged the door down and rushed in with violent disregard.  The loss of all in one swift stroke left him reeling under the intolerable burden of sorrow and suffering.  The constant itching and pain of his sores, and the nausea and other side effects of his illness finally began to take its emotional and spiritual toll on Job.  He sank beneath the billows of despair and depression.  He cursed the day of his birth.  He felt that God was unfair and had “shot him through with arrows.”  Job became so weary and bewildered by his suffering that he finally began to feel that God had only blessed him with so much in order that He could “take it away and harm him.”

As the story progresses, you see that Job’s real pain was far more than physical or emotional.  It was the pain of failing to understand why God was letting this happen to a man who was indeed “blameless.”  Job had been living right, and he knew it.  So why was God letting all this suffering fall on him?

As I thought of Job, I thought about the many people who will read the words that I have written and will identify with the story.  Moms and dads, church leaders and pastors, young couples and senior saints, lonely singles and lively teenagers from all walks of life have an affinity with Job’s “real pain.”  I thought of a precious young couple with whom I went to school whose fifteen-year-old son recently died mysteriously in his sleep.  I thought of a missionary friend whose wife walked out on him and left him with five children to raise.  I thought of a pastor who was carelessly voted out of his church and left to pick up the pieces of his shattered future and heal the wounds of his embittered children.  I thought of a senior saint forced into a lonely nursing home.  I thought of a faithful administrator suffering the terrible pains of burnout and deep depression from having given all to advance God’s kingdom.  I thought of a young wife left alone with two small children after the tragic death of her husband.  I thought of a young teenage girl trying hard to live for God in a godless environment, who brutally lost her virginity to a wicked stepfather’s incestuous behavior.

Like Job, each of these people have journeyed down the treacherous path of pain and to the dark places of sorrow and suffering and can’t understand why.  Perhaps each of us can identify with Job.  None of us are strangers to discouragement and despair.  We, too, battle with the painful question: Why?  The real question is not why, but how do we respond?  Do we just give up and quit?  Do we become bitter and turn our backs on both God and man?  The answer, of course, is a resounding NO!  The great lesson learned from the book of Job is that we have a heavenly Father who can and does bring triumph out of trial and blessing out of brokenness.  Job teaches us that God has a way of using suffering in our lives to make us better.  Someone has said that it is doubtful that God can use any man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.  Suffering has a way of seasoning and sanctifying the soul like nothing else we will ever experience in life.  The tragic marriage and personal suffering of Hannah Whitehall Smith became the seedbed out of which grew unbelievably rich and blessed devotional writings.  J.B. Phillips, who is well known for his beautiful translation of the New Testament, lived in a constant struggle against depression.  His biographers wrote of him, “He knew anxiety and depression from which there was only temporary release.  For a period of fifty years he had to cope with psychological disturbance and dark depression.  And while he never lost his faith in God, he never ceased to struggle against mental pain.”  William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, came to a point more than once in his ministry that he was so drained and dried out that he wanted to quit and get some respectable job that would keep him and his wife Catherine going.  William Booth, however, is remembered by the Salvationists as a tower of strength, a man of abounding energy and unrelenting in his warfare against sin.  Behind the scenes, though, we see a glimpse of his humanity and his being subject, as we all are, to depression in the face of exhaustion and hardship.

The secret to all of these people’s successful lives and the secret to your success is simply in “going on” when life is difficult.  They kept their faith in Him who knows what’s best.

Are you under great stress and facing deep suffering?  Are you under great pressure beyond your ability to endure?  Are you discouraged?  Are you asking questions that seem to have no good answer?  You are in good company.  The great saints who have gone before you did too.

Life will afflict all of us with trouble and pain.  We will all be tempted to turn and run or to give up and quit.  Life will tumble in someday for all of us; but when it does, just keep holding on and keep going on.  Victory and unspeakable blessing will be yours in the end.