I've been exercising my fiction muscles after many years of not using them in any disciplined way. "The Roar" is a flash-fiction Christian story that was recently published on Transfigured Lit. I hope you like it.
On his WYPR FM radio show, my Baltimore Sun colleague, Dan Rodricks, interviewed Dr. Eban Alexander III, author of Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey Into The Afterlife.
Worth a listen.
I had the pleasure today of interviewing Linda Hoy, author of a terrifically entertaining and thought provoking book called The Effect.
The book explains how spirituality and science not only can co-exist,
the principles of one can actually help support those of the other.
Ms.
Hoy takes readers on a bit of an intellectual roller coaster, exploring
issues of life, death, afterlife, time and multiple universes. The
ride includes Aboriginal philosophy, research into near-death
experiences, quotes from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, the art of
Salvador Dali, a primer on quantum physics and lessons learned from the
movie, Groundhog's Day. It's written in a fun and accessible way that
is sensitive to the inevitable questions the topic raises from both the
scientific and religious communities.
I'll have much more on this book soon. Stay tuned...
John
15:16 – Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye
should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatever ye shall ask of the Father in
my name, he may give it to you.
This project first came to mind more
than a decade ago. At the time my family
was living outside of Austin, Texas and I was a freelance writer. Jim Leickly, a college friend, had become
heavily involved in some Christian men’s movements and in the course of a
conversation he mentioned that he had become friends with Ted DiBiase, a
popular professional wrestler known as “The Million Dollar Man.” A high school friend of Jim’s, Hal Santos,
had introduced Jim and Ted. Hal, it
turned out, was the pastor who came to Ted’s aid after the wrestler had
bottomed out while on the road in 1992, drinking, doing drugs, and being
unfaithful to his wife. With Hal’s
assistance, Ted cleaned himself up, reconciled with his wife, Melanie, and set
forth on a successful path of evangelism that he continues to this day.
I’ve always had a respect for and
fascination with people who had devoted their lives to doing God’s work
24/7. And I was curious about what that
call must be like. Is it something you
hear? Something you feel? Something that others divine on you? There were times in my life when I wondered
if I should or could pursue a career in service to the Lord. But I was pretty sure that I had not received
a calling which pulled me in that direction.
And without that, I feared I didn’t have the commitment or
qualifications necessary.
So, how did someone like Ted DiBiase
wind up moving from the mat to the pulpit, preaching God’s word? I started to learn more about Ted’s story,
and I did my research, I was surprised to discover that many professional
wrestlers had become ministers. I
decided it would make a great story to examine why such a violent form of
entertainment had yielded so many men of God.
Jim put me in touch with Ted and I
recorded an hour-long interview with him.
I had just started to make contact with several other wrestler/ministers
when the project came to an abrupt and prolonged pause in the fall of
2001. That’s when I accepted a job offer
to come work for the Baltimore Sun, the city’s major daily newspaper. In the course of the move from Austin to
Baltimore, my notes and interview tapes were misplaced. And with a full-time job to keep me busily
distracted, the project drifted from my mind.
I love my job. Working in a newsroom can be an energizing
experience. You’re often the first to
know what’s going on and you meet interesting people. But the past 10 years in this business have
been incredibly stressful. Newspaper
circulations and revenues are down industrywide. Staff cuts have been frequent, deep and
emotionally draining. The cuts have
resulted in more work for those of us left.
Add to that the unrelenting deadlines and daily diet of stories that are
often overwhelmingly depressing and discouraging and by the summer of 2011 I
was exhausted, defeated and felt like I was a passenger, not the driver in my
professional life.
It’s was during a weekend of
self-examination that I convinced myself that I needed to start a side project,
something that I had control over and that would provide me with a positive and
affirming distraction from the grind of the newsroom. For the first time in years, I remembered the
wrestler project. I went into our home
office and pored through our file cabinets, hoping that I might rediscover the
notes lost in our move. But an hour of
searching turned up nothing.
The next evening I was back in the
office. This time I was simply looking
for a music CD to take on my commute to work.
As I flipped through the CD cases, I noticed one with the word “Calling”
scribbled on the case. It was a data
disc. And yes, it had the notes from my
2001 interviews. To borrow a phrase from
one of the people interviewed for this book, you didn’t have to hit me upside
the head with a wet squirrel to convince me that this was a sure sign that it
was indeed time to resume this project.
Once I restarted it, I decided to take
it beyond wrestlers turned ministers.
For a couple of years, I had been reconnecting with old friends on
social media sites like Facebook. It
impressed and intrigued me that so many of them had gone into Christian
ministry. For some of them, it seemed to
me like a natural progression. Whenwe
were kids, they were among the leaders in our Bible study and youth
groups. But others – well, I was
pleasantly surprised that their paths took them to where they are today.
So I began to contact people and ask
them to participate in this project. Ted
DiBiase graciously agreed to be interviewed again, even after I told him that
I’d lost the original interview tape from 2001.
It didn’t matter to him. He’s a
man with a tremendous testimony and he enjoys sharing it. I contacted Ben Holloway, an old friend who
was one of my Facebook finds. Ben and I
grew up on the same block in Madisonville, Kentucky. He was a wild child when I knew him and when
I moved away from Madisonville in 1973, Ben was one of the last people I would
have expected to develop into a globetrotting evangelist. David Cobb is an Episcopal priest and friend
I first met in Oak Park, Illinois, then reconnected with when we moved to
Baltimore. David baptized two of our
three children. Another Episcopal
priest, Carr Holland, was rector for my brother’s church and was the officiant
for my niece’s wedding. I had never met the other two ministers profiled in
this book until starting this project.
But I feel I was directly led to including them because their stories
are so compelling. Derrick DeWitt, a
large, powerful leader of a Baptist church in one of Baltimore’s most
crime-ravaged neighborhoods, has proven to be the right person in the right
place for churches in need of rescue.
And Marellen Mayers, a Roman Catholic Woman Priest (yes, you read that
correctly) has been resilient and persistent in answering a call to serve that
never waned despite numerous obstacles.
For the most part, this is an oral
history. I conducted hours of interviews
with the participants, and rather than translate what they told me, I felt it
would be more effective to simply step aside and let them tell their stories so
that you can pick up through their voices the personality, thoughtfulness,
enthusiasm and passion of each person.
The project was an education for
me. In retrospect, some of the things I
learned probably should have been obvious.
Among them, you can be called to serve in a ministerial capacity other
than pastoring. I was directed to
Ephesians 4:11, which says that some are called to pastor, while others are
called as apostles, evangelists, prophets, and teachers.
As expected, there was some variation
from story to story. But there were also
some common themes. Most, but not all of
the people I interviewed had grown up with strong Christian foundations. A couple of them had strayed from the church,
lured by drugs, alcohol and or sex, and bottomed out before storming back into
the fold. Two of the people had profound
transformational experiences that involved water imagery.
Then there were experiences that were
consistent among all the people I spoke with.
Each person felt a strong, personal invitation from the Lord to go into
their particular ministry. They felt the
call, listened to it and acted on it.
Each person credits others with recognizing the call within them, sometimes
before they themselves heard it.
What I hope the reader will learn from these
stories is how these ministers experienced, recognized and acted upon their
callings.
I’m not sure
why I was so surprised to discover so many wrestlers in ministry.After all, you don’t have to go very far into
the first book of the Bible, Genesis 32:24, to find mention of the first
biblical wrestling match, pitting Jacob against an angel.
I first spoke
to Ted DiBiase, professional wrestling’s “Million Dollar Man,” in 2001 after my
friend Jim Leickly told me about Ted’s ministry.Ted truly loves sharing his testimony and
it’s one that a lot of people can relate to because, as he’ll tell you, like
most of us he’s far from perfect.
Ted was born
January 18, 1954 in Miami, to Helen and Ted Wills.Ted Wills was Helen Nevins’ second
husband.Her first was Al Galento, a
professional wrestler she married in 1943 when she was 16.That marriage was short lived, ending within
a year.Her marriage (IN WHAT YEAR?) to
Wills, a singer, didn’t last long either.They divorced soon after Ted’s birth.
By 1956,
little Ted and Helen were living in the little town of Willcox, Arizona, with
Helen’s mom, Verda Marie Nevins, who kept an eye on Ted while Helen went out on
the road to earn a living.At first
Helen was a dancer, but then she found a niche as a lady professional wrestler.It was during her wrestling career that she
met, fell in love with and married another wrestler, “Iron” Mike DiBiase, who
adopted Ted and became his role model.
Although the
family moved frequently during Ted’s youth, the church played a major role in
his life no matter where the family was living.Ted was raised as a Catholic and early on entertained thoughts of
becoming a priest.
But his dreams
of priesthood were eventually eclipsed by his dreams of becoming a professional
athlete.At first, he wanted to play
big-time college football and then go onto the NFL.He received a scholarship to play for West
Texas State University.His NFL dreams
never materialized.Injuries suffered in
football, a marriage in 1973 to Jaynet Foreman and his first forrays into
professional wrestling began leading him in a different direction.
In 1977, his
first son, Michael was born.By then,
Ted’s wrestling scheduled prevented him from spending much time with Jaynet and
Michael.By 1978, Ted’s reputation as a
wrestler was growing and he was given an opportunity by the National Wrestling
Alliance for a title match in St. Louis against long-time family friend and NWA
heavyweight champion, Harley Race.The
match ended in a draw, with Harley Race retaining his belt.But Ted had caught the attention of Vince
McMahon, Sr. who was about to launch his World Wrestling Federation (WWF) into
the big time.
As Ted’s
wrestling career began to come together, his marriage was falling apart.In early 1980, he and Jaynet split up.
Early the next
year, a mutual friend introduced him to Melanie Kennedy.Ted was in love at first sight and on
December 31, 1981, he and Melanie were married.
Ted’s
wrestling career continued to arc throughout the 1980s and he returned to the
WWF as its popularity explodedIn 1987,
Ted took on the ring personna, “The Million Dollar Man,” and became one of the
WWF’s most popular villians.
But worldwide
fame brought with it a worldly way of life that was far from Ted’s altar-boy
upbringing.He fell victim to the
temptations that come with fame, money and constant travel.It came to a climax in the spring of 1992
when he was in Chicago.During a phone
call home to Melanie, she confronted him about his drug and alcohol abuse and
about his infidelity.
The phone call
devastated and scared him. He was afraid
he was about to lose his life with Melanie and their two sons.Knowing that he had to make big and immediate
changes in his life in order to keep his family together, he phoned an old
friend, Pastor Hal Santos.As Ted’s
wrestling career had grown, he had often used Hal as a spiritual sounding
board.
Ted explained
what had happened.Without hesitation,
Hal said he would fly from St. Louis, where he lived,to Chicago to help.Once in Chicago, he listened to Ted’s story
and then contacted Melanie.Then he
arranged a reconciliation meeting between the couple, which included a trip to
the Ascension Convention, a youth revival being held just outside Chicago.It was during this event that Ted answered
the invitation to come up and accept Jesus Christ.
Ted continued
to wrestle, manage and serve as a commentator for WWF, but also began sharing
his testimony wherever he went.In 1996,
he left WWF for World Championship Wrestling, and he stayed with WCW until
1999.That was the year that he founded
his Heart of David Ministry and became a full-time evangelist.
Today, Ted and
Melanie remain happily married.They
live near Jackson, Mississippi with their sons, Ted Jr. and Brett, both of whom
have gone into the family business of professional wrestling.Ted has also reunited with his son Michael,
from his marriage to Jaynet.
Jackson is also the homebase
of Heart of David Ministry, which takes Ted to churches, schools, prisons and
other venues all over the United States, inspiring more men to take active
roles of leadership in the church.And,
as “The Million Dollar Man,” he still makes an occasional appearance at
wrestling events. In this excerpt, Ted talks about his Heart of David Ministry and the advice he gives others who think they may be called by God.
HEART
OF DAVID MINISTRY
Heart
of David Ministry was born in 1999.I
probably could have just called it Ted DiBiase Ministries, because I am Heart
of David.It’s evangelism.It’s my ministry.It’s me going and speaking wherever God leads
me.Whether it’s a church or a prison or
a halfway house or a schoolyard or a street corner.I go and proclaim the Gospel.
Why
I chose the name Heart of David was in studying the Bible, I remember when I
was in this infancy in terms of my relationship with God and my knowledge of
the Bible, I was led to the 40th Psalm.It’s basically David’s cry for help after he
had sinned with Bathsheba and had been confronted by God.I can remember going and reading it, even
before I knew a lot of the psalms were written by David.I would read that psalm every day.It was my comfort.When I realized it was written by David and I
started studying about him, I found that his major sin, the flaw that caused
his fall was the same as mine.It was
adultery.Again, in studying the word
and our relationship with God, when a man understands that he’s flawed from the
moment that he starts breathing, that his body is selfish, that it’s our
instinct to take care of number one first, all the time, that’s the
battle.We don’t need the devil’s
help.I tell people, “The devil made you
do it?The devil didn’t make you do
squat!”Here’s when the devil had
influence.When we get to a place in our
lives where we can’t do this alone.When
we get to a place where we keep trying to do things our way and our way keeps
bringing us to the same dead end.There’s a proverb that says, “As a dog returns to its vomit, so the fool
to his folly.”People will continue to
go back to what they were doing and the only thing that’s going to fill the
void is Jesus Christ.I’ve seen it time
and time and time again.Now, when you
finally cry out to God and say, “Okay Lord, I realize that I can’t do this on
my own.”That’s when you’ll realize
that’s why God sent Jesus.Because he
knew that none of us could to this on our own!
He
gave us the Ten Commandments to show us that we couldn’t live up to them in our
humanity.When you say, “Lord Jesus,
come into my life.I accept the Father’s
gift.I accept your death on the cross
and your sacrifice as the atonement for my sins.Lord, you come into my life and you begin to
lead my life and I’m going to follow you.You come on board my ship and take the helm.You take the ship where you want it to go and
I’ll follow you.”When you make that
decision, when you realize that you can’t do it without Jesus, now that’s when you’ve got the devil’s
attention.That’s when he’s going to
come in and that’s when he’s going to tempt you.And he’s going to tempt you where you’re the
weakest, where you’re the most vulnerable because he’s the greatest liar of all
time.
That’s
what I tell people in my testimony.That
is exactly what happened to me.I had
made a walk down the aisle in the church that I attended, Morrison Heights Baptist
Church.It was the second time I’d
walked down the aisle and said the Sinner’s Prayer, asking God to forgive me
and I got baptized again.The pastor
told me, get into the Word, read the Bible daily, get a daily devotional.And get into a men’s fellowship – you need
accountability.Get to church as often
as you can.All that says one
thing.Dive into this relationship with
Jesus!I say this over and over and over
that the difference between every other world religion and genuine
Christianity, is that genuine Christianity is not a religion.It’s a relationship with Jesus Christ.If you don’t have that relationship, if
you’re not speaking to him on a daily basis, if you’re not in the Word as often
as you can be, if there’s no conviction in your life, then you don’t have
it.I’ve held the Bible out in front of
churches and said that if the only time you crack this book is on Sunday, then
Jesus Christ isn’t Lord of your life.You can’t have a relationship with somebody you only speak to five
minutes a week or two minutes a day.Jesus said, “Clothe the naked.Feed the hungry.Take care of the
widows and orphans.Visit the prisoners
in prison.When you do this for the
least of my brethren, you do this for me.”
ADVICE
FOR OTHERS
I
say this from the pulpit all the time that we’re living in a day and a time
when I see Christianity floundering.I
see religion floundering in the world.When you read the Bible, there’s always a remnant.Some people say, “How does God speak to
you?”A lot of people go to church on
Sunday.They show up and they put in
their hour.Some of them for the most
part try to live a pretty good life.Some think they’ve got their ticket punched and they’re in.Well, I’ve got news for them.Jesus, in Matthew 7:21 said, “Just because
you say to me ‘Lord, Lord’ doesn’t mean you’ll enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but
only those who do the will of my Father in Heaven.Many will come in that day” – and he’s
speaking of Judgement Day – “many will come in that day to me, ‘Lord, did we
not prophesy your name and in your name drive out many demons and do many
miracles?’And then I will tell them
plainly, ‘Depart from me for I never knew you.’”So I ask them, “Who was he talking to?”He’s talking to people who’ve done miracles
in his name, driven out demons.I mean,
big miracles!And they’ve done them in
the name of Jesus.And he’s going to
say, “I never knew you”?Who’s he
talking to?Well, he’s certainly not
talking to a murderer or a rapist or a drug dealer.I said, “People, he’s talking to people who
go to church every week.He’s talking to
people who just punch the ticket.Because what God looks intently into is the heart of man.”
There
are three things I tell them they have to have.Number one is an understanding that if you’re really a Christian, then
you have to have a relationship with Jesus.They say, “What does that require?”I say, “What does that require with anybody?You have to spend time with him.Think about your closest friends.Think about the person you call at two in the
morning when you break down on the side of the road and you’ve got one bar left
on your cell phone?Think about who
you’re going to call.”Well, I’m going
to call that one person who no matter what the situation, I know they’re coming.They’re not going to let me down, they’re not
going to make an excuse because of the intimacy of the relationship.The greatest relationship of a Christian’s
life is not supposed to be with their wife or with their kids.It’s with Jesus.It comes absolutely first.And when it does, everything else will fall
into place.I have lived a life that
proves that.
And
if you ask me, “How do you hear God speak to you?”Well, ifyou’re in that relationship with Jesus, then he’s got to be able to
speak to you daily.“Well, how do you do
that?”You read the Bible, the Old and
the New Testaments.And you read it
daily.Now, that doesn’t mean you have
to read 25 chapters a day.I do a daily
devotional.Sometimes I read one verse
and I meditate on that verse.Sometimes
it’s just a random verse.You can go
online and there’s different Bible-reading plans, if you will. But reading the
Bible educates you to the history.
GOD’S
GAME PLAN
We
live in the flesh and the flesh is weak and the flesh is self-serving and
self-centered.
The
first thing people hear from me is called “Following God’s Game Plan.”God has a plan for everybody’s life.Ephesians 2:8-10 says, “For it is by grace
you have been saved through faith.This
not of yourself.It is the gift of
God.Not by works so that no man can
boast.For you are God’s workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for you
to do.”That Scripture says several
things.Number one it says you can’t
earn salvation.You can’t work hard
enough.You can’t light enough candles
and go to enough masses and say enough Hail Marys to earn Heaven.You can’t earn it.If you could earn it, Jesus wouldn’t have had
to come.But because it’s impossible for
us to earn it, we needed a way and God provided a way through Jesus.We’re saved by God’s grace, by his mercy
through the sacrifice of his son.When
we accept the sacrifice of Jesus as our atonement, what we’re saying is Lord,
you gave all of yourself for me.Now I
am your bondservant.I’m going to do
whatever you want me to do.I’m going to
try to transform my life.Dr. Ed Cole
said this, “Genuine manhood is synonymous with Christ’s likeness.”And he’s right.The more Christ-like your character is, the
more of a man you are. And that’s what
you try to attain.
Another
Scripture says, “God’s gifts and his calling are irrevocable.”I tell men this all the time, “We’re not
unique.We’re all the same and we’re all
equal in the eyes of God. But we are all uniquely called.We all have unique gifts and we all have
unique talents and what God wants of us is to take whatever gift he’s given us
and whatever sphere of influence he’s given us and be number one.That’s okay!Be ambitious.Some people will
tell you it’s not important to live a significant life.That it’s prideful.That ain’t it.God wants you to live a significant
life.The difference is, and this is why
it took so long for Ted to find out, it’s too the glory of God.Not to the glory of self.Seek first the kingdom and its righteousness
and then everything will else will be added to you.
Ben Holloway is a fidget.Always has been.My memories of him as a kid are that he was
undersized and overly active, always moving, even when he was standing
still.It’s not surprising that someone
with that much energy found an outlet for it as a drummer.Drumming was in his blood – his mom, Mary,
was a singer, and dad, Starling, was a drummer who encouraged Ben to start
playing at an early age.Starling, who
when he wasn’t doing a thousand other things (I guess the boundless energy also
ran in the family) had a jazz band back in the 1940s and 1950s and even spent
some time playing for Dinah Shore.
Ben and I grew up in the same
neighborhood in Madisonville, Kentucky, a town of about 15,000 souls in the
heart of the strip-mining coal fields in the western part of the
commonwealth.Ben was exactly two years
younger than me – we share the same January 25th birthday – and we
lived at diagonal corners on the block.He was always a lot of fun to hang with, in part because of his
bottomless pit of energy, and in part because we were both a little impish,
prone to mischief, albeit harmless mischief.
One of the reasons I was surprised to
find that Ben was on the Lord’s payroll was that he was one of the first people
I knew who casually took the Lord’s name in vain.I don’t know why it left such an imprint, but
I clearly remember him doing so one day in the presence of his older sister,
Finley, and her reply was, “God’s last name isn’t dammit!”
Another reason his current vocation was
a little surprising is that in the early 1970s in Madisonville, there were two
rapidly growing movements attracting young people.One was the blossoming of Bible study groups
all around the town.The town was ripe
for it.You probably couldn’t walk 10
minutes in any direction without passing the door of a church or two.And, since there wasn’t much else to do in
Madisonville, the Bible studies provided kids with a great social gathering
outlet.But there was another movement
rapidly growing, and Madisonville was earning national notoriety for it.Drugs were becoming pervasive.Many teens, and lots of adults, were coping
with small-town boredom by getting high.Kids were getting arrested and kids were dying.And CBS’s 60 Minutes produced a 1975 report,
holding up Madisonville as the poster-child for America’s rural drug problem.
In early 2011 Ben and I reconnected via
Facebook.I had moved away from
Madisonville after my sophomore year in high school and lost touch with
Ben.What I found out after our online
reunion was that Ben had lost touch with Ben, too.He detailed his lost years with drugs, but
very passionately described his profound transformational experience in
1974.During that experience he had a
vivid vision of Hell.That was followed
by a complete surrender to the Holy Spirit during which his drug and alcohol
addictions were replaced with an addiction for the Word of the Lord (his
description, not mine).
After that experience, Ben began
sharing his testimony in churches around Madisonville, and it was in one of
those churches, Christian Assembly Church in Madisonville, that he met his wife
to be, Karen Roberts.They were married
in 1980.
Ben continued playing the drums and
traveled with Christian bands throughout the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.In 1982 he decided to settle down and he
started a home-security business.On the
weekends, he continued to share his testimony.But in the mid-1990s others began to recognize that he was blessed with
a calling to global evangelism.He began
to travel, sharing his story and helping train pastors in foreign lands.But the more he traveled, the more his
business suffered and in 1998, with Karen’s support, he decided to devote his
enormous well of energy to full-time evangelism and Impartation Ministries was
born.
Through Impartation, Ben focuses on
pastoral training and he teaches at conferences throughout the United
States.He frequently takes his message,
enthusiasm and passion to conferences abroad in Mexico, the Middle East,
Africa, South America and wherever he is called.
Ben and Karen have raised two children
and still live in Madisonville, where Impartation Ministries is based and where
they continue to be active in Christian Assembly, and where Ben has served in
many capacities since 1977.
The following excerpt is Ben's story of his profound conversion experience in 1974.
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TRANSFORMATION
I
continued to party and I continued to do drugs and I continued to drink. Until
July 14, 1974. That’s when I had this dream.
What
I saw in the dream I now know was scriptural. Now that I look back on it it was
so cool because I didn’t have any Bible frame of reference. In this dream I saw
a very dark place. It was a literal, physical place, like a cave. There were
flames burning out of the rocks. I saw people screaming in torment and burning,
eternal weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. It was just incredible. I
had no idea what all this meant. But I was later to find out that what I was
seeing was the scriptural interpretation of this place called Hell. What was
interesting about it now that I look back on it was that none of these young
people had talked to me about Hell. It wasn’t something that had been planted
in me, it was just something that I saw in this dream. It’s been too many years
and I can’t remember how long the dream went on – it seemed like it went on for
a very long time. But I remember sitting up in bed in a cold sweat and I was
stone cold sober. It was the first time I’d been like that in three years. It
was about two in the morning because I remember looking at the clock. I laid
back down in the bed and it was soaking wet and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I
just tossed and turned all night. And I remember saying to myself – it wasn’t like
I was praying – I was thinking out loud, “What does this mean? What does this
mean? What does this mean? Why am I dreaming this dream?”
Carol
Cummings was one of the teenage girls who had tried to share Jesus with me. She
called about eight o’clock the next morning and asked me if she could pick me
up and take me to church. I didn’t tell her anything about the dream, I just
said, “Yeah, sure, why not. I don’t have anything else to do.” I remember her
reaction to that was kind of shocked because she expected me to say, “No.” When
I said that I’d go, I remember her saying, “Really?” And I said, “Yeah, yeah,
I’ll go.”
So
she picked me up in time to go to church. We walked into this service and it
was a full-blown charismatic full-gospel service with a band and singers. I’d
never seen that before. People had their hands raised up. This worship was
intense, it was extreme, it was passionate worship. Carol and I sat about
halfway back in the building. After about four or five songs, the pastor, Roy
Conley, who I’d never met before, takes the platform, comes up to the pulpit
and says, “About two weeks ago, I had prepared a message to preach this
morning. But I cannot preach that message. I have to preach what the Lord has
given me to preach.” He said, “At two o’clock this morning…” – and that got my
attention. I had just remembered my experience from a few hours earlier – “…the
Lord gave me the message that I’m supposed to preach.” And he took his Bible
and he began to preach exactly what I had seen just a few hours earlier. Oh,
and he did say this, “This is only the second time in 20 years in the ministry
that I’ve ever preached on this subject.” And he preached exactly, I mean
exactly, what I had seen just a few hours earlier. And, he said, “I have no
idea why I’m preaching this message.”
At
that point I hadn’t told anybody. I hadn’t told Carol or my parents or anybody
about my dream. I remember the pastor giving an invitation to receive Christ,
and I stood there. I was holding onto the pew in front of me until I thought my
knuckles were going to break open. It was a hot day, there was no air
conditioning in the building and I was shaking like it was 40 below. He said,
“We’re going to open up these altars here if you’d like to come and pray, and
if there’s anybody here who’d like to receive Jesus and avoid this place that I
have just describe, come up.” He preached not only about Hell but about
salvation through Jesus and it was not God’s will that anyone should perish but
that everyone should have everlasting life. I mean, I’d never heard this
before.
I
literally stepped out from the pew into the midldle aisle and I ran. I didn’t
walk, I ran as fast as I could and I just fell on my face. I didn’t pray this
elaborate, wordy prayer because I didn’t know how to pray. I just said, “Jesus,
help me.” That’s all I knew how to do. I did say, “Jesus, if you are Lord, if
you can do anything with my life, I want to give it to you. Just set me free.”
My
emotions didn’t manifest in weeping or anything, but let me tell you what
happened next. I was on my knees and oddly enough, there was nobody around me.
Nobody was laying hands on me, nobody was praying for me. I think maybe in that
situation it was that God didn’t want anybody to touch me or help me pray
because I just needed something that was so real, and for lack of better terms,
untainted by human contact.
I
had my head bowed. I was kneeling and I had a sensation of somebody taking a
garden pail with a big shower head and pouring it on top of my head. Hot water.
It was so real that I thought some kid had gone to the back of the church and
filled up a pail and was pouring water on me. In fact, I know this is going to
sound funny, but it kind of irritated me. I’m having this experience with God
and some parents have let their unruly kid do this to me! Isn’t that strange?
I
was just about to open my eyes and say, “Stop it! I’m connecting with God
here!” And when I looked up, I raised my face toward the ceiling, and I opened
my eyes fully convinced that I was going to see this garden pail pouring water
on my face. When I looked up, there was no pail, but I felt the water cascade
over my face, all the way down my chest, over my shoulders, totally like I was
standing in the shower. And then there was this sensation like someone taking a
toothbrush and just scrubbing me. Every square inch of me. Just cleansing me.
It’s the only way I can describe it to you.
You’ve
got to understand that for three years I had seen the world through the cloud
of drugs and alcohol. When I got up from that experience – and I don’t mean to
sound spooky or strange – the sky was bluer, colors were more vivid, I heard
birds singing. Things I hadn’t seen or heard in three years. It was like God
was showing me the earth that he had created and I was able to see it through
eyes and a brain that was unclouded by drugs. I was totally, completely set
free from addiction in just a matter of moments.
Marellen Mayers laughs easily and often as she shared
the story of her vocation. Sometimes the
laughter is ironic, because the road she’s taken to the ministry has had
twists, turns and detours that might have discouraged others from following
through on answering the call.
Marellen is a Roman Catholic Woman Priest. It’s a provocative title and one that she is
fiercely proud of. Roman Catholic Women
Priests, or RCWP, is a an international
movement that was born in 2002 when seven women were ordained on the banks of
the Danube River in Germany. The group
openly challenges the Roman Catholic Church’s Canon Law 1024, which states that
only a baptized man can validly receive sacred ordination. RCWP describes the law as unjust and
discriminatory. Today there are more
than 130 Roman Catholic Women Priests worldwide.
The Catholic Church does not recognize RCWP as a
movement within the church or the ordinations.
However, the women priests contend that they have been accepted by the
Catholic people and will continue to serve in “grassroots communities where all
are equal and welcome.”
Marellen’s ordination 2011 was the fulfillment of a
calling that began to feel when she was growing up in Baltimore. As a child she often “played priest” with her
brother and sister. A few years later,
as a young woman she joined the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent DePaul, an
apostolic community of women throughout the world dedicated to helping the poor.
But her deep devotion to the church has been
accompanied by a need to understand why the church does what it does. She has always asked questions and those
questions have not always been met with comfortable or satisfactory answers. Among the questions she feels was never fully
answered was why, in May 1980, she was asked to leave the Daughters of Charity
after serving five and a half years.
During the ensuing 31 years, she worked as a nursing
assistant, child live specialist, social worker and campus minister. It was also during this time that she met her
husband, Craig, to whom she’s been happily married for more than 25 years.
The embers of her calling were not fully extinguished
when she left the Daughters. In fact,
they began to burn hotter, leading her to feel that she was being led to serve
in a higher capacity than she had before.
But she was also conflicted by this feeling, knowing that as a Roman
Catholic there was no way she could become a priest. She and Craig considered moving to the
Episcopal Church, but Marellen ultimately did not want to walk away from the
Catholic Church.
Then one evening, a friend who not only recognized
her calling but also the struggle she was having with it, asked if she had ever
heard of the Roman Catholic Women Priests.
Marellen initially thought the friend was joking, but after he told her
more about the group and she did her own research, she reached out and
contacted RCWP. She was ordained June 4,
2011.
The path since has not always been smooth. The ordination has cost her one job and
perhaps prevented her from getting others.
But Marellen will tell you that the fulfillment of a life-long call to
answer Christ’s call to ministry has been worth it.
In the following excerpt, Marellen describes finding out about RCWP.
RECALLED
I started at Shelam
Institute in what was more of a residency program than an internship. It
was 10 days in the summer of ’07 and 10 days in the summer of ’08. In the
summer of ‘07 when I met my class there were 15 of us in the class, all women,
all Christians, but there were eight different denominations represented. Of
those 15 women, there were also eight women who were ordained in various
ministries – Episcopalian, United Church of Christ, Lutheran, Methodist.
I felt like I had hit a gold mine of , “Wow, can I talk to these
people!” And they were very helpful, too. And in ’07 I shared with
them that I kind of had this calling to priest hood and I didn’t know what to
do with it because I’m Roman Catholic and it’s not going to happen in the Roman
Catholic church, or so I thought. That’s when, it was the year of ’07,
that Craig and I started talking about the Episcopal church. He said, “If
you want to do that we can do that, part of my family’s High Anglican anyway.
This is important to you and you can go to seminary and you can be
ordained and you can get a parish somewhere.” So that was the year that I
took to really discern about the Episcopal church. My classmates
thought that when I came back in ’08 that I’d be telling them that I’d been
accepted into the Episcopal seminary. In the meantime, a dear priest
friend of ours came to dinner and we were talking, and I’m forever asking him,
“When do you think this is going to change?”
And, “When do you that’s going to change in the church?” When I
mentioned the role of women and I mentioned women’s ordination – and I had looked
up the women’s ordination conference and that kind of stuff. And he said,
“Haven’t you ever heard of Roman Catholic Women Priests?” When he said
that, I said, “What did you say?” And he repeated it and I threw my
napkin across the table at him. Craig didn’t know what was going on.
I said, “Oh, come on, you’re pulling my leg!” And he said, “No, I’m
not. When you get a chance, go to your computer and look them up.”
Lo and behold, that night that’s exactly what I did and I was on the
computer about three hours, reading everything on their website. And when
I finally went to bed – it was like 2:30 in the morning – I woke my husband up
and said, “I think now God has found a way that I can be ordained a priest!”
Baltimore’s Western District is typical of many
seen-better-times American inner-city neighborhoods. It is dangerous and downtrodden. The district
has suffered more than 150 homicides since the beginning of 2007. A drive through the streets of the community
reveals an abundance of boarded-up homes and businesses. It almost seems that the only things thriving
in this environment are dueling symbols of despair and hope – liquor stores and
churches.
A bright oasis among the islands of optimism is the
First Mount Calvary Baptist Church on North Fulton Avenue. The church is presided over by Pastor Derrick
DeWitt, a large man with a passionate voice.
DeWitt is a product of the neighborhood.
He was born in West Baltimore in 1967 to Carolyn DeWitt and Steward
Koger. First Mount Calvary was one of the churches he attended regularly as a
child. He lived in an apartment with his
mom, two older brothers and younger sister until he was 10. That’s when his mom met William Marshall and
the family moved to his house in East Baltimore, a side of town that offered
safety and comfort rarely found on the west side of town. The east side was also home to his other
childhood church, Southern Baptist Church.
Discipline has always played a major role in DeWitt’s
life. Self sufficient from an early age
and influenced by the leadership exhibited by the men of the churches, it’s not
surprising he was drawn to a career in the military.
DeWitt’s time in the Army and National Guard was
distinguished, with time served in Korea, Iraq and an assignment at the
Pentagon. It was during his time in the
military that he answered his call to the ministry. It was also where he met his wife, Cassandra,
a woman who was literally the answer to his prayers.
A hallmark of DeWitt’s pastoral career has been
turning around struggling churches. His
first success story was rescuing the Garment of Praise Baptist Church outside
of Washington, D.C. Most recently, it
has been the remarkable turnaround of First Mount Calvary. Although he’s had success with both suburban
and urban ministries, he notes they offer vastly different challenges. And he
sums up those differences with a story.
“When I got to my current church in the city I was praying for the
people in the church. I said, ‘If you
need prayer, come up. I want to pray for
you individually.’ So a gentleman comes
up in the prayer line and says, ‘I need you to pray for my hearing.’ I oiled my hands and laid them on his ears
and began to pray for his hearing. I
said, ‘Young man, I hope this helps you.
Please let me know if it does.’
He said, ‘Yeah, I’ll let you know.
My hearing is on Tuesday.’”
While DeWitt can use humor to make a point, he knows
that the problems facing his inner-city congregation are serious. He has pulled First Mount Calvary from near
financial ruin. And one of the pillars
on which the church currently operates is a commitment to community
outreach. First Mount Calvary has a drug
rehab ministry, free youth summer day camp, food pantry and fresh produce
distribution, and a senior health program.
The church also participates with the city of Baltimore and other
organizations on a community rehab program that fixes up abandoned properties,
turning them into temporary housing for displaced families. He and others in
the church are also actively involved in the Western Police District Council. I first met Pastor DeWitt a week before
Christmas in 2011 when that group was preparing a holiday meal at the church to
thank the police officers and fire fighters who protect the community.
DeWitt is working on his own book about his
ministry. In it he plans to detail his
guide to answering God’s call.
The following excerpt details a vivid dream DeWitt experienced while serving in Korea that turned his life around.
-->
LIFTED
UP
I
had a very wonderful and successful career in the military. My last 10 years in the military I was
promoted five times. But when I first
joined the military, I fell into the life a lot of young men fall into, hanging
out at the club. Just going to church
occasionally as many of us young men do when we get away from home, when we get
away from grandmom.
But
I had an experience that brought me back and sealed it for me. At one point I was living with a young
lady. Even though I had a room at the
barracks, I spent most nights there at her home. And I had this tremendous guilt all the time
about doing that, about living with her.
One night I’m lying in bed and it appears to me that I’m fully
awake. I’m just lying there, and then I
begin to levitate off the bed. I go up
through the ceiling, through the trees in the front yard, all the way up to the
clouds in the sky. When I get up in the
clouds in the sky, the winds begin to blow, the clouds begin to move and it’s
raining. I mean it’s really pouring down
rain. And the clouds begin to form
words, and the words said, “Last chance!!!”
And I began to fall back down.
Everything I saw going up, I saw coming back down. I fell back through the trees, I fell back
through the roof of the house and I landed on the bed softly. But when I landed
on the bed, I was soaking wet. I mean I
was soaking wet from head to toe as if I had really been in a rainstorm. The young lady said, “Did you have a bad
dream? Why are your clothes wet?” I mean I was soaked from head to toe. I got up out of the bed, dried myself off,
changed my clothes, packed up all my stuff and I went back to the
barracks. When I got there, I got on my
knees and I prayed. I said, “Lord, from
this day forward I will preach your Word.”
And I’ve been preaching ever since.
“Ordained ministry is at
its heart about the formation of character: i.e. whatever function and
prerogative is laid upon us must rest side by side with the spirit and heart, a
way of seeing, a way of being, which we bear for the whole community of the
Baptized.”
The Rev. J. Carr Holland
delivered those in 2003 during the ordination of five deacons at Trinity and
St. Phillip’s Cathedral in Newark, New Jersey.
At the time, Carr
Holland was the rector of St. Grace Church in Newark, New Jersey. He was also in transition into the role of
President on the Commission on Ministry for the Diocese of Newark. In his latter role, he served on the
commission that oversaw the church’s process for evaluating candidates for
ordination.
The Episcopal Church has
a comprehensive process for discernment, or evaluating an individual’s call to
serve the church. The process has
evolved over the past several decades from a fairly informal process to one
that is structurally codified in the canons of each diocese. Prior to the 1970s, the typical path was that
a candidate for ministry was recommended by his or her home vestry and priest
to the bishop, who would then make a determination as to whether or not the
path to ministry would continue. The ‘70s
saw the rise of the Commissions on Ministry and the formalization of the
prescriptions for discernment. The
commissions would still make the recommendations to the bishop, but because of
the scrutiny of the process, their recommendations were very loudly listened
to. The process, once begun, takes
several years to complete and moves candidates through a series of interviews
with clergy and lay councils, a psychological examination, seminary, ordination
as a deacon, and then, if it is deemed to be the proper move for the individual
and the church, ordination into priesthood.
Holland understands well
the serious personal and institutional vetting involved in evaluating a call to
ministry. As he pointed out in his
remarks, the vocation must be for the balanced good of the individual’s “spirit
and heart,” as well as being compatible for the good of the church as a whole.
As a member of the
Commission on Ministry, he is quick to point out that not everyone who feels he
or she has a vocation actually has one, and that the commission’s
responsibility is not to herd ministers into the church, but to protect the
institution of the church from people who may not be truly be called to
serve. Perhaps the greatest challenge to
his own sense of calling came from within when, as a student at the University
of North Carolina at Greensboro in the early 1970s, he had to sort out a
personal crisis of faith. But after
considerable self- examination and spiritual guidance from friends and mentors,
he recognized that he was experiencing a genuine call to serve.
After graduating from
UNCG in 1972 with a Bachelors of Science in Sociology, he earned his Masters of
Divinity from the General Seminary in New York.
He served parishes in New Jersey for more than three decades, before
returning to his native North Carolina in 2010 where he now serves as an
interim priest.
In the following
excerpt, he describes how incidents late in his college years helped answer
questions he had concerning faith and vocation.
CHANGING DIRECTION
By the second semester of my freshman year I had
taken a fairly significant number of art courses. You were expected to do mostly academic
things. I done a little more than
dabbling and I realized that as much as I loved art, it probably wasn’t going
to be a place I’d want to spend my life.
I had this other value in my life that began to shift in. I wanted to do something with my life that
helped people. I thought about teaching,
and I settled into sociology, thinking it might be the right thing. I was doing social welfare
concentration. And that just settled in
more and more and felt that it might be the right thing to do. And by my senior year, I was concentrated in
services to children. I was given a
field placement in a children’s home for two semesters. That was what I chose to do and I had a sense
there might be something more.
In my junior year I made an appointment with
Father James Hindle to talk about whether I had a vocation to the
priesthood. I wasn’t clear. It was just a conversation and I didn’t have
a follow-up conversation. I was given
books to read and that didn’t help me in the slightest.
Looking back on it, I’m not sure if Father Hindle
could have done more for me in that moment than he did. But there was one phrase he used with me back
then that has always stayed. He told me
I should prepare for a career outside the ministry and only when I felt like I
had no alternative but to be ordained should I seek ordination. That was a curious phrase that I played with
for the next several years, because I felt like there were other things I could
do since I thought that’s what I would do.
But at the time, I was left with what I would say
is I had a confusion, and I wasn’t sure whether it was a direction or whether
it was a desire on my part. I couldn’t
sort out where it emanated from. By my
senior year I was afraid it was other peoples’ pressure and not really a
calling. Katherine and Frank Whaley I think recognized what were the possible
signs of a vocation and so they encouraged me.
And you know, encouragement, when you’re not there, can feel like
pressure. I wouldn’t say they pressured
me, but I experienced it as pressure. I
think maybe I pressured myself from the time I first had the conversation about
a vocation. I wasn’t sure what it meant
but I didn’t want to be unfaithful, so there was a kind of inner pressure. Some of my peers certainly saw the
possibility there. And of course, in
your college years you’re so desperate to sort our what it is you’re to do for
life that that’s it’s own kind of funny thing.
So, I was a little bit confused whether it was other people pressuring
me or if it was something I felt genuinely called to, and so I just pushed
away.
The other curious chapter was that in my junior
or senior year, sometime around Christmas time or thereafter I had a real
crisis of faith. I don’t remember the
chronology of these two things – the conversation with Father Hindle and the
crisis – but I had a moment of crisis when I suddenly felt, “What if none of
this is true and I’m making my life on it?” I resigned from teaching Sunday
school and from everything at that point and I told Father Hindle that I would
not be coming to church for a while. He
didn’t push me. It was a deeper
conversation, so there were questions.
But I recall that he said, “When it’s right for you, you’ll be
back.” I only stayed away two
weeks. And then it was like, “This is
the answer.” So I began to continue to
go to church, but with this puzzle in my brain.
I think it was my junior year, because I remember I decided to take a
course in religion, but it was a course in the phenomenon of religion. The very first book we were assigned was a
book by Elizabeth Sewell called, “The Orphic Voice.” (cq, cq). In the introduction to that book she used the
phrase, “I’m going to take you on a journey, but to take you I must use the
myth of Orpheus. You must trust the myth
to bear truth to make the journey.” I
remember it was like I got slapped in the back of the head and I said, “There’s
my problem. I have to trust the biblical story to bear truth, and then I’ll
know where I am to go.” It was like turning the light on. It sprang forth and it was that phrase that
caught me.
There is another moment that’s critical in all
this. I mentioned that I had a fieldwork
placement in a children’s home. I had
two afternoons a week from noon to five, and I had three specific people on my
caseload plus other kinds of training going on.
One of those people was a teenage girl.
All three were siblings and all three had been severely abused in the
home of their origin. I would meet with them regularly. I don’t remember the rotation exactly, but I
think it was once every two weeks. The
teenage girl had these questions, and we would talk. But as a social worker you have very defined
areas of what you can respond to and how you respond. You’re essentially trying to assess the needs
of this individual and where the system can reach in to meet those needs. This girl’s questions struck me. By my second semester, they were all
religious questions, and because it was a Methodist children’s home we couldn’t
deal with those questions, we could simply forward them to the chaplain. But I had a real sense that because they were
so profound and came out of her very abused childhood and this was a pretty
fundamentalist Methodist home, that the last person she could talk to was the
chaplain. The questions were about why
things happen and about meaning. They were about what her life means now. She was trying to finish high school and
figure out what was next. And I don’t
remember them except there was a sense that they were really more religious
than social work and they were the questions I really wanted to deal with in
life. That was a push-pull. I could sense the vocation again, but was I
deluding myself? What’s going on
here? So while I credit her with that
moment of sparking that question in me, I don’t even remember her questions,
and I certainly didn’t deal with it by saying, “Oh, this is what I’m called
to.” But it was just one more question
inside myself.