A Phenomenon at Sunset

Every three years Inter-Varsity holds a meeting on the campus of the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. The goal is to encourage students to give themselves to Great Commission enterprises. I urged a group of new Christians to attend Urbana ‘76 with confidence they would be bowled over by at least one of the two great speakers featured that year. When they returned they could only rave about Helen Roseveare. I was mystified. I’d never heard of HR. Of course I asked for tapes. After listening I became a serious fan.

In 1983 the Ben Lippen Conference in Asheville, North Carolina, hosted Helen Roseveare at one of their Summer Conferences. Sadly Ben Lippen Conference is no more. It was operated by Columbia Bible College which is now called Columbia International University. In Britain Inter-Varsity has changed its name to Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship. This year the meeting will be in St. Louis not Urbana. The trend toward name-changes among Churches and Christian Institutions is rampant. My own Mission, ‘Entrust’, used to be called BEE (Biblical Education by Extension) International. It’s a trend with which I sympathize having been sorely tempted to change my own name on numerous occasions. I don’t even have the option of retreating to the more serious “Ronald” as “Ronnie“ is the name on my birth certificate. Those of us born in the American South are often saddled with the names of young children which must be borne through adulthood. Just ask Billy Graham. In one Church I was informed that I would have to abandon “Ronnie” because it didn’t fit the sophisticated international city where I’d just landed. Initially I leaped at this opportunity. The prospect of having a name consonant with a nature as romantic and intellectual as my own (so obvious to all who know me) as well as a name worthy of that great city excited me immensely. Sadly I had to give it up in the end. However much I admitted the need, and however much I wanted to go through life being called “Sebastian Paradise” or “Crispin St. Cyr” (those were the two finalists- I decided that if I was going to change my first name I should go ahead and change my surname as well) I couldn’t imagine that it would go down well on my visits back to Norcross, Georgia. Where I grew up we usually leave these prerogatives to the mom and dad. Inter-Varsity and Columbia Bible College were held back by none of the considerations which inhibited me and I wish them well.

But I digress.

After hearing Helen Roseveare speak six times on Jonah I concluded that she was the best speaker I’d ever heard. I knew it grated whenever I expressed that opinion. Comparisons, as Will Shakespeare noted, are odious. Plus she’s a woman. When I gave the Jonah tapes to a Marine Sergeant in our North Carolina Church he protested “Why are you giving me tapes by a woman?” I simply asked him to fasten his seat belt and pay attention. The next day he called and said “You told me about the seat belt; why didn’t you tell me about the crash helmet?” That Marine (who’d not attended college at the time) now holds a PhD and is on the Faculty at a Christian College. I like to think Helen Roseveare inspired him on his way.

It’s probably not wise to say that Helen Roseveare is the best speaker I’ve ever heard because of the way the opinion provokes controversy and comparisons. Better to say she moves me more than anyone I’ve ever heard. The question is “why?” Three things stand out:

First: Great gifts. This is pretty much a commonplace. We would expect great gifts from those invited to speak at Urbana. We run into great gifts fairly often though we’d like to encounter them even more. She is a gifted thinker. She is a gifted theological processor and, supremely, she is a gifted speaker. Her sense of dramatic moment, intonation and emphasis are perfectly calibrated and combine for maximum effect.

Second: Great commitment. Her intellectual gifts earned her an MD from Cambridge University. Women had to be overqualified to be considered for Medical School in the 40’s. But it was her great commitment which brought her into the great danger where she made her impact. Instead of settling down into the middle class routine which physicians could expect in Post-War socialist Britain she set out for Africa. From 1953 to 1973 she practiced Medical Missions in the Belgian Congo which was later called Zaire which is now called Congo .(Our name change motif persists). She built a clinic in a place called Nebabongo where she embraced obscurity, danger and difficulty as a way of life.

The third great element is suffering. Great gifts plus great commitment plus great suffering. The first two we may frequently witness but how seldom the three in combination. We are all dealt a measure of suffering, but for her it has been GREAT suffering. Helen Roseveare was kidnaped and tortured by rebel soldiers in the mid-sixties and during the five months of her captivity was subjected to ordeals worse than death.

In that crucible was forged a witness to Christ’s sufficiency in the cruelest of situations. She faced her agony with this prayer, repeated like a refrain in a hymn of praise:
“Lord, I thank You for trusting me with this experience, even though You haven’t chosen to tell me the reason why.”

Two years ago I told some fellow-missionaries that HR was the best. It never occurred to me that we should invite HR to our next Conference for the same reason it never occurred to me to invite the Beatles to my birthday party. I thought it would be overreaching. I knew it would be futile. But two of my colleagues did invite her and she accepted. And so we heard her in Sopron Hungary on April 22-26. When she was invited neither she nor we knew that Sopron would be her last speaking engagement. It’s a decision we pray God overrules but the reality invested our time with a solemnity and sense of occasion we’d not anticipated. We heard Helen Roseveare in the sunset of what has been a remarkable career of faithfulness to the King of Kings.

I thank God for Helen Roseveare. And I thank God that the state of media technology in the 20th and 21rst Centuries make it possible to hear her voice after retirement.

I wish I could have heard the voices of Edwards and Whitefield and Spurgeon.

But the voice of Helen will suffice.

Passing It On

Skip and Barbara Ryan were the featured speakers at the first annual Danube International Church Retreat in Cserkeszőlő, Hungary April 17-19. Skip is the Chancellor of Redeemer Theological Seminary in Dallas.

His messages connected here. We don’t want to hoard the insights in our part of the world. They need to be circulated. Here are some thoughts which appealed to me especially:

Fear is a refusal to live in the present.
It costs us much to lose everything but when we lose everything we begin to live.
While you’re lying to God you can’t experience His love.
Adversity introduces me to myself.
Every addiction leads to stealth. And stealth makes betrayal inevitable.
It is the love of Christ which breaks us.
Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die (I’d heard this said of blame).
Humility was not considered a virtue in the ancient world. For Paul to elaborate upon Christ’s great humility in emptying himself and refusing to cling to the prerogatives of Deity (Phil. 2:4-11) was counter-cultural to a considerable degree.
Manual labor was not considered an acceptable occupation for a man of consequence. For Paul to publicize that he made tents was equally counter-cultural.
What somebody else thinks of me is none of my business.

Personally I find the first and last insights to be the most provocative. I find the last to be especially liberating. It’s one thing to be reminded (as we often have been) that we oughtn’t to worry about what other people think. It delivers a fresh jolt to be told that what others think is actually none of our business!

One confirmation of Christian truth comes when we meet people of widely divergent backgrounds who share the same experience of having the core of their personality and history dissected and defined by what Scripture reveals .That happens when we compare notes with our other believers. Further confirmation comes when we see a commonality of experience with those figures we encounter in Holy Scripture. It is certainly possible to gain marvelous insights about human personality when we read other ancient literature like the Odyssey or the Aeneid. But the Bible takes us to another level. Those other ancient writings do not unmask and convict us. Nor do we find in them the power to effect personal transformation.

The proper word a (bit overused in recent years) is resonance. Much of our shared experience would remain static, discrete, random and ultimately lost if not clarified by the infinite reference point which is the Word of God mediated by the Spirit of God. Skip led us in those kind of shared discoveries and affirmations. For that we are grateful.

And from that we share.

The Power of Pop Culture

Wednesday night Beyoncé performed at the Sport Palace in Budapest. Earlier that day I boarded a train for the Czech Republic. In my early youth I would have cursed my fate. At age 58 I simply view it as good timing. I’m not familiar with Beyoncé’s music, but I did catch her in the first Pink Panther movie which starred Steve Martin. Probably Beyoncé is not familiar with Exodus 3. If she were she would not have called her spring travels the “I Am Tour”. At least I hope she wouldn’t. Seems I remember that in 2008 Beyoncé and her husband earned only slightly less than the gross domestic product of Paraguay. Such is the power of Pop.

Speaking of the new Inspector Clouseau, a Christian leader who never comments on my sermons rushed forward to congratulate me for quoting Steve Martin in my opening remarks a few Sundays ago. (A banjo was featured in our worship that morning.) That kind of thing happens quite often. People are more likely to talk about something not related to the exposition of Scripture. A wonderfully effective women’s teacher once confided to me that nearly 100% of the women who wanted to speak with her after she taught were seeking counsel on personal and family problems. They almost never registered interest in implications and applications from the text. Of course, if we hope to help anyone with their problems we’d better be ready with implications and applications from the text. It’s always amazed me that if I mention a film or a line from a song it almost never fails to elicit comment.

Popular culture is a force to be reckoned with. It is often a negative thing. It can be a neutral thing. It is seldom a positive thing, though its lessons can be shaped for edifying purposes by thoughtful believers. I realize that I too am influenced by popular culture, but I hope not as much as I used to be. I have no desire to listen to Beyoncé, but I’m glad I saw the Beatles live when I was 14. When I was a university student I had not one but two posters of Bob Dylan on my wall. Almost any jingle-jangle morning I would have followed him. Then one day I realized he wasn't kidding when he sang "...there is no place I'm going to” (Mr. Tambourine Man). Whether the change came about because I became a Christian or because I was growing up, I don’t know; maybe it was a bit of both.

As far as ministry in the 21st century goes we may take more than one approach to popular culture. Some churches gauge the direction of the cultural wind and begin to pedal hard in that direction. We may congratulate them for their alertness. But there’s a difference between heeding and leading. Those churches are much more likely to show a clip from a film than they are to quote from someone like Augustine or Calvin. Another approach is to always learn from culture but never give in to it. It is prudent and it is sometimes necessary to note cultural markers which a majority of the congregation are thinking about. Then, having duly noted those cultural influences which affect our thinking, we give ourselves to the hard task of bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

I vote for option two.