Returning a Gift, Part 2

Spirituality Column #56
December 4, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Returning a Gift, Part 2
By Bob Walters

The first time I saw Russ Blowers was Labor Day weekend of 2001 on the exact 50th anniversary of his ministry with East 91st Street Christian Church.

Though he retired in 1996 at age 72, he continued as Senior Minister Emeritus of the huge Castleton-area independent Christian church in Indianapolis and was a faithful, friendly and familiar face in church nearly every Sunday. He offered comfort and counsel by phone, card or visitation virtually every day.

Russ loved and was loved, and he died this year (2007) on November 10.

Dave Faust was E91’s senior minister in 2001 (he is now president of Cincinnati Christian University). To celebrate those 50 years, Russ was invited to share that Sunday’s sermon as the two marvelous ministers discussed the abiding Christian values of Faith, Hope and Love.

His pulpit appearances rare since 1996, the huge sanctuary throng went stand-up-and-cheer crazy when Russ was introduced. E91 is one of those churches that cheers.

I didn’t know what to make of it. I grew up traditional Episcopalian, where we didn’t cheer; and on that particular Sunday attended church for basically the first time in 30 years. The music was different, communion was different, worship was different … and Russ was different.

As quickly as the cheers rose, Russ stepped forward, smiled, made a gentle “sit down” motion with his hands, and the crowd quieted … almost instantly. Amazing command of an audience.

Russ briefly told of his start with the congregation in 1951, when it was a struggling church of 150 or so on East 49th Street. He joked that the hardest thing he did initially was cancel the annual fish fry fundraiser.

He insisted that the little congregation would praise God, promised that he would preach Christ, and unceasingly prayed for the leading of the Holy Spirit. The church grew and grew.

As to Faith, Hope and Love – 50 years later – Russ’s basic message was:

Faith is formed by our past,

Hope is formed by our expectations of the future, and

Love is what governs our actions today.

Simple and true, Russ got my attention.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is writing a Christmas series about the best gift he ever got and his hopes to return it. More next week.

Returning a Gift, Part 1

Spirituality Column #55
November 27, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Returning a Gift, Part 1
By Bob Walters

This Christmas season I’m going to talk about the best gift I ever got, and about how desperately I want to return it.

My dear friend Russ Blowers died a couple weeks ago. He was a prominent Christian preacher in Indianapolis known throughout the nation and, because of his influence on countless global missionaries, throughout the world.

Over the years Russ
- built a local congregation of 4,000 or so at East 91st Street Christian Church,
- was a good friend of Billy Graham’s,
- chaired or otherwise facilitated the Graham Crusades here in Indy,
- had a vision for both global missions and North American church planting,
- raised two exceptional sons Phil and Paul,
- cared for and stood by his wife Marian (they were married in 1946) through a decade of Alzheimer’s until her death in 2004,
- was a World War II Army Air Corps veteran,
- and, among a zillion other things, was that preacher on Indianapolis Channel 8’s daily “Chapel Door” featurette (oh, yeah … ) from 1954 through 1968.

I had never heard of Russ Blowers (rhymes with “flowers”) until I wandered into “E 91” Labor Day weekend of 2001. Russ had been senior pastor at East 49th Street Christian Church beginning Sunday, Sept. 2, 1951, moved the congregation up to Castleton and East 91st St. in 1977, and retired in 1996.

That Sunday, Sept. 2, 2001, happened to be the exact 50-year anniversary of his ministry with that Congregation.

I was sitting in the back row.

Understand I hadn’t been to church on any Sunday, including Easter, more than a half dozen times since I was a teenager in the early 1970s. I’d go to funerals and weddings, but the God thing wasn’t for me. Christ seemed like a good idea but made no sense. The Holy Spirit was just another ghost floating in the ether, and the Bible was just another old book of decent advice that was hard to read.

It was sitting in the back row that Sunday as Russ, retired but invited back to the pulpit, spoke of Faith, Hope and Love – “The Abiding Values of East 91st” was his sermon title – when “something like scales fell from my eyes” (see Acts 9:18 … maybe read the whole chapter?), and a very surprising tear trickled down my face.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) will unwind this story over the coming weeks. He was in church that day because his 13-year-old son Eric suggested it.

Patience and Tribulation

Spirituality Column #35
July 10, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) Newspaper

Patience and Tribulation
By Bob Walters

I was a young sportswriter covering a Notre Dame home football game in South Bend (v. Purdue, 1976) and at dinner the night before I sat next to legendary Irish athletic director Edward W. “Moose” Krause.

Highly-rated Notre Dame (11th pre-season) lost its season opener at home to Pitt the previous week and was knocked out of the AP Top 20 rankings.  Dan Divine coached the team to a 9-3 record that season (1976) and the national championship in 1977, but I have never forgotten a funny comment Krause made at dinner that night.

He mentioned that just prior to dinner he had been with the football team in chapel and I asked him what he prayed for. Krause, considering the team’s record, said deliberately, “I pray for patience.”

Great line.

Several years later I was chatting with my friend Jonathan Byrd who owned race cars in the Indianapolis 500. After his team had struggled early in May I mentioned Krause’s comment about praying for patience.

Jonathan, an incredibly bright man of Baptist persuasion and exceptionally well-versed in the Bible, chuckled but made the point, “You have to be careful when you pray for patience.” “Why’s that?” I asked. “Because,” Jonathan said, “God teaches patience through tribulation.”

Yikes.

I was a Christian without the walk in those days, but I understood what Jonathan meant. You’d have to be mighty brave to pray for patience, because you can’t control how God may deem best to provide it to you.

Romans 5:3 in the King James version says “… tribulation worketh patience.” In my NIV Bible this is the lyrical chain where Paul says “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

Nothing is as important in our walk with Christ as our faithful perseverance, and there’s no better word for that than patience … and no greater fruit of patience than hope, which as the verse continues, “does not disappoint.”

You just have to be brave enough, trust God enough, and have the character to pray for patience.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) spends more time praying for patience than actually being patient.

Hope or Hell in 2007? It's your future

Spirituality Column – #8 – January 2, 2007
Current! In Carmel newspaper

Hope or Hell in 2007? It’s your future
By Bob Walters

Hope, as we see the word in the Bible, is always about the future. Even when scripture refers to hope in the present or past, it is in one way or another talking about a future fulfilled, a desire denied, or an aspiration abandoned.

Tomorrow can be a rough ride.

With 2007 still stretching another 363 fresh tomorrows before us, for what do you hope in the New Year? What do you think you will find?

Here’s some good news. Satan isn’t there yet; he does not work in tomorrow. He works in our past and, when temptation triumphs, in our present.

How do I know Satan is in the past? Because our sin is in our past. We haven’t sinned in the future yet. That’s why Satan’s power resides in our past.

Hell is when you expect Satan, instead of Christ, to be in tomorrow.

Christ is our hope for the future because God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit – the Trinity – are eternal; They are already in tomorrow. Satan isn’t eternal, but he does have perfect knowledge of our past and, with temptation and guilt, uses our past as a constant weapon against us.

While Satan may well visit each of us each of these next 363 tomorrows of 2007 and beyond, we know that in the very end, our past goes away and Satan goes with it. Even in this life, when our past goes away, Satan’s grip slips. But Satan’s persistence is never far from us.
There is a wonderful, all-purpose prayer from the Orthodox church, called the Jesus Prayer, that I love to pray when Satan shows up:

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.”

We may not be able to dispatch our fallen nature, but we can work to dispatch Satan by focusing on Christ. Satan will try to come back, but Satan can’t threaten us from the future. He knows our weaknesses from our past and tempts us today.

Tomorrow – our hope -- is up to us.

I think the purpose of our life on earth is no secret and pretty simple … love God, and love others. What makes everything so, um, interesting, is our sin.

The only way to prevent sin is to perfect our relationship with God. I think we all know that isn’t going to happen in this life, but we try. And we always have the hope of tomorrow, where God, Christ and the Holy Spirit already reside.

Satan will only get there because he rode along with us. Hope only makes sense when Christ, the promise of our future, is in the equation.

So here is a question for the New Year: are you going to ride with Christ, or is Satan going to ride with you?

Either way, you’d better buckle up.

Walters, a Carmel resident, hopes his airbag deploys. Contact him at rlwcom@aol.com.