USA - FINAL WEEK

  

 

Dear Friends,

The American churches did not use hymnals of words alone. Everyone in the congregation had music copies. One result of that was good harmonious singing but another was that there was little purchase of hymnbooks printed in the United Kingdom like Grace Hymns, Christian Hymns, Gadsby, Hymns of Faith, the Scottish metrical psalter etc. that were overwhelmingly word only editions. Even in their music copies the words of English hymnbooks were not written between the two clefs as they are in the USA but separately right at the bottom of the page. It is ironic that today in America one finds in most churches and conferences the ubiquitous projected words on the screen behind the pulpit. No music. They have caught up with the British. Will harmonies also go? In Wales people always took their music copy hymnals to church and there was the four part harmony that made singing in the Welsh language renowned. I still listen on Sunday afternoon at 4.30 in London to the weekly half hour of Welsh hymn singing on Radio Cymru. I do miss Grace Hymnal and those 400 hymns old and new that I selected and we sang each year. I shall never sing many of them ever again. What a privilege to have that responsibility. I think I gave to Wales the hymn “A man there is, a real man” which we sang each Sunday night of the Aberystwyth conference. So it became included in the new Christian Hymns - even though some hyper sensitive compiler toned down and changed the words of the first verse.

You know that Reformation Heritage Books published my In the Shadow of the Rock and if you go via Google to their website you will be introduced to a long section on the book. They have exhibited there the first 25 or so pages as an encouraging “Come on and buy me. Let me whet your appetite.” It contains all its positive commendations written by a dozen men, and then the first chapter about my father and his upbringing in Dowlais, It is presented well.

The Conference near Dallas ended Sunday lunch time after a morning divided into two, a prayer meeting of 150 people and then a service at which Timothy Conway customarily preaches. He brought a message on our need to evangelize. Vigorous, addressing our consciences by presenting us with the achievement of Christ and the plight of man without him. I need to listen to it again. The messages will be sent around the world on the “I’ll Be Honest With You” website. Do visit it. Already they have sent out my opening meditational or devotional on Philippians 3, “In everything by prayer and supplication make your requests known to God.” I watched the opening ten minutes, The notes were too low down and I was looking down, bent over, and the shirt I was wearing looked too big for me! Etc, etc. It is not easy looking at yourself preaching. It was the inevitable, “Down, boy, down” message after the liberty I had last Sunday,

We drove the five hours from Dallas to San Antonio, Timothy. Ruby, Ryan and me, It was a superb vehicle with all our gear in the back in the open and us high and firm in the cabin. We heard three sermons of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one after another, from his consecutive preaching on the early chapters of the book of Acts. What preaching it is! So full! So exhaustive! So evangelistic and so full of Scripture that he quotes naturally and pointedly, those beloved verses from Romans that he has preached on throughout his life. It was a feast. At dusk we got to San Antonio and the temperature was down to 85 degrees. I have a beautiful room in the Holiday Inn with a coffee making machine, and I can drink the excellent coffee out of the new mug that I was given at last week’s conference. I had forgotten just how powerful the water jet is in American showers! I felt it was taking a millimetre off my epidermis, and I glowed afterwards.

The temperature in San Antonio was just as hot on Monday and I ventured out of my air-conditioned luxury to get a meal. What I bought was enough to last me until Wednesday (taken back to the hotel in a doggy bag). Then on Tuesday the rain came, there was no sight of the sun and the temperature dropped to the fifties. I did my washing, learning how to operate these large powerful washing and drying machines. Tim Conway picked me up at 5.30 and drove me five minutes to a restaurant which had been one of the first places where they met as a growing church. A building had become too small and they had gone to the Holiday Inn to see if there was a room there available and large enough to hold a hundred people, but in the car park Tim met the owner of this restaurant to whom they told their mission. “Why don’t you meet in my restaurant?” he asked. And so they did, expanding it by taking down some of the internal walls, They packed in up to 200 people, and one morning baptized on the pavement of this thoroughfare half a dozen people. Then that building got too small and they bought the warehouse which now they have filled. So, on this Tuesday evening, the restaurant which is a burgher restaurant began to be filled by the church people, by I guess 100-150 people, many families, different races and social classes. I had the best hot dog I have ever had. We sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Timothy, and he had to blow out the candles, and there was a large cake to be cut up and divided among the singing congregation so glad to have their pastor back for this happy visit, the conference and the wedding of his daughter in four days’ time. He is returning to Manchester in a week’s time. We had three happy hours there of buzzing friendship, laughter and serious conversations. What a fellowship they are. What stories behind the conversions of many. This is a spark of revival. I cannot think of another church in the U.K. like it.

Wednesday dawned and I was invited by Tim Conway’s elderly father-in-law to a remarkable Mexican restaurant for breakfast. It is called Mitierra and you can work that out to see its meaning, ‘My Land.’ It is huge. Hanging from its ceiling are thousands of decorations and it long walls are covered in murals of hundreds of the leading Mexicans of the present day. Of course, the virgin Mary has her statues and paintings and shrines, and the Pope is painted in a prominent place. All the middle-aged waitresses are dressed in Mexican folk costumes. It is a place with a happy atmosphere, not for young people but for serious eaters who appreciate the ambience of that remarkable and troubled country to the south of the USA. Each night it is packed to the rafters but at this time, 10 a.m. we could choose where we wanted to sit and eat.

We went on to visit Ruby’s sister and family and had such a happy time there. Her brother in law, Sam, is longing for a heart transplant (with many others). He wears two batteries around his neck. They hang down on each side of him and keep his heart pumping. What a joyful home. Then in the evening it was the mid-week meeting at the church, held in the main auditorium. Maybe over 150 there, many children as good as gold. It started at 7 and we left at 10. I preached on Christ praying in Gethsemane and afterwards had long talks with young and old with their questions and problems. What an honour. Tim spoke to them and asked for their continued prayers. Again, his coming to the UK seemed such a remarkable event, a pastor of a continually growing congregation with constant blessing and scores of conversions, leaving that scene and coming to the barrenness of Greater Manchester, in the spiritual drought of the United Kingdom and Europe. He delivers a church that was isolated and hurting, deserted by its pastor’s departure, without a building, good people wondering where to turn, isolated from reformed Baptist churches in the north west of England, a loner group, knowing that they needed counsel and no one else to turn to whom they trusted but Tim Conway, He goes there himself! He lifts them up. When I preached there members talked to me and asked questions about the Christian life and the Bible just as they do in Texas. Such conversations are rare in most evangelical churches in the UK. It is a remarkable story, as if I had gone to Kenya if Keith Underhill had returned to the UK and given years to preaching there. I would not have considered that possibility. Oh me of little faith.

On Thursday I wrote and prepared for my talk at 7 p.m. to twenty men from the church on the subject of preaching. They videoed it all for later broadcasting on the web. I was quite free in my memories and comments. I spoke on the call, the training, counselling, taking it slowly in introducing consecutive expository preaching, the absence of awakening ministries today, books and websites. We had two hours of fellowship, questions and my teaching. What a delightful time it was and how thoughtful and serious were the men. The sad news was to hear that Timothy Conway’s cold was much worse and he was now in bed. It is the rehearsal tomorrow night and the wedding at 4 p.m. on Saturday when he is giving away his daughter (her husband to be was listening to me tonight) and then Tim is supposed to be marrying them, I hope there is some anti-biotic that can deal with it in the next 48 hours. By Friday Tim was out of bed and was able to attend the wedding rehearsal and dinner, which event I missed going instead to a meal with Katherine Wilsack and her mother who had travelled here from their home in Florida. We did have a happy time together and that is so on every occasion on which we’ve met. They have found a splendid church and pastor near their new home for which I am very pleased.

This final Saturday I replied to the letters that continue to come in. Then at 2.30 Tim and Ruby came and picked up his mother (staying at the hotel) and me and took me to a company headquarters where there is a large hall and stage where the wedding and reception was going to be held. We were an hour early and talked to folk, Ryan particularly has been such a buddy during this visit, having him to make my way to and chat to - great. Then at 3 the eight bridesmaids in black dresses (very elegant) lined up on the left of the stage and seven groomsmen in shirts and braces over their white shirts stood on the other side and then the bride came in and stood in the middle, We sang some songs and ‘Great is Thy faithfulness.’ Tim preached from Ephesians 5 on the institution and role of marriage. They made simple vows and were pronounced man and wife. We went out of the room, and the rows of seats were replaced with tables. We returned and chatted for an hour before it was our turn to go for a hamburger or a hot dog and salad, Then the best man and the groom spoke sweetly and briefly and I spoke with a microphone in my hand on “The Lord is good; a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knoweth them that trust in him.” Then all the chairs and tables were removed and there was fun dancing, mainly children in a large congo file running round and round with kids at the back trying to reach the fast line. Older ones danced jumping and shaking and finally there was one subdued dance at the end for the oldsters. It was all natural and noisy while all around the edges there was the bustle of conversation by the older ones. The evening finished around 9 when the couple drove off to cheers. They are going to northern California on their honeymoon. What a natural, easy, happy event. I was back in my room at 9.30.

Then the final anticlimax . . .  Sunday I heard Tim Conway preach at 10 and at 11.20 Ryan led the Lord’s Supper. Every seat in the building was taken. We sang four or five hymns including “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” Then at 12 I preached on Hebrews 1 verse 3, a little fazed as the sloping lectern was not in place and my notes were very low on a shelf. They listen so well, all the seats in the church taken, and when you talk to people you meet many, many who have been converted there across the years, many men. It is remarkable. We had a delicious lunch as tables were brought in for everyone, lots of meat, and happy conversations. They sang to me, “The Lord bless you and keep you” and I needed that prayer for after Joshua Conway had brought me to the airport and I had gone through the formalities of getting my boarding pass and waiting the two hours for the flight to Dallas, then, that bad moment, the announcement that there was a bad storm in Dallas and the flight was delayed. So, I sat three hours in the airport and then another three hours in the plane on the tarmac and then another hour’s flight and we got to Dallas at 10.45. I called Mack for help and that wonderful man came searching for me from Denton to the airport and we finally got together around midnight and he drove me through ground water and heavy rain back to his home when finally I got off to sleep at 1.30 after telling everyone in the U.K. via Email that I would not be home for some days. The line of people waiting for new tickets to different parts of the world was about 80, and the queue was not moving at all. I spoke to two people in front of me and they had missed their flight to Australia. I spoke to another man who had lost a business deal and it was costing him $1000 and the airline just shrugged. All the hotels were booked and he had nowhere to stay. But I had Mack and I booked a flight home on Wednesday evening. I went with Mack to the home of Dr. John Green a few hours away and had a delightful time with John, Michelle and Rachel even meeting their son and his wife. The work of these two is in repairing and advising the maintenance of racing vehicles all over the world and is much sought after for his counsel. We went to their workshop. It was spotless. We had the happiest and most blessed time and that compensated for the loss of the experience of meeting old friends whom I see only at the Banner of Truth conference. Throughout our two days there Mack worked on the proofs of his life of David Brainerd, the book coming out some time later this year published by the Reformation Heritage Books.

I am not unused to these times when I have been ministering with divine help to know some interference from the god of this world bringing a trial at the end. The evil one hates the blessing God has given at those meetings, but God works it for my good. Inevitably the Texas Christian Experience came to an end. Mack drove me to the Dallas airport and we hugged good-bye. I had a safe journey home with an empty seat next to me and a good conversation with a woman across the seat. I got the tube from Heathrow to Acton Central where Pauline Cooke met me and drove me home to Chiswick to a happy reunion with Barbara and to the normal unpacking, reading of a pile of mail and adjusting to jet-lag. The next day I had another implant. All went smoothly. Texas was great, and coming home was also great.

Be at peace.  Geoff