The Overflow
Clever Trick—but Cowardly
A certain congregation known to us has had four preachers within the last three years. The church is honey-combed with members who are living with a second, or even a third husband or wife. Whenever the elders of this church get ready to move a preacher, they do the job with finesse and delicacy. Nothing so crude as to tell him he is fired! They just ask him to preach a few sermons on "Marriage and Divorce". The resulting furor is always such that the preacher either leaves voluntarily, or else the elders can with good grace tell him that there is so much turmoil in the church over his preaching he obviously must leave. Clever, what?
—O—
No insults possible At this writing we are about to close a good meeting with the church in Del Rio, Texas. Song leader for this series has been M. Roy Stevens of Freeport, Texas. Bro. Stevens has a good formula for keeping out of trouble. He says, "If a man is a Christian, he won't insult me; if he isn't a Christian, he can't."
Howard Unruh—religious fanatic. The whole nation was shocked a few weeks ago when a moody, emotionally unstable war veteran went berserk in Camden, New Jersey, and killed thirteen people before he could be stopped. The newspapers made a great to-do over the fact that this man was a "religious fanatic." He was described as a Bible-reader, a church-goer, etc. etc. But one interesting thing that most of the papers did not mention was that killer Unruh was even more fanatic about movie-going than he was about church-going. He spent hour after hour in the movies, watching the gruesome scenes of crime, bloodshed, drunkenness, murder, vice, adultery, seduction, hatred, and violence flash before his eyes upon the screen. And, by his own statement, it was while seated in a movie that Unruh came to his fateful decision that he would go out and shoot all his enemies.
—O—
No authority for "leaders"
We are in full agreement with the position taken by Otto Foster, elder in the Central church in Cleburne, Texas, in his new book, "Scriptural Government of the Church." Bro. Foster says, "Some churches have fallen into the practice of selecting leaders in the congregation—men who perform the functions usually assigned to elders and deacons, but who bear the designation leader. It is just as wrong to create an office that is not designated in God's plan for church government as it is to select men as church officers who do not meet the qualifications... it is better to remain scripturally unorganized than to become unscripturally organized."
—O—
A matter of punctuation If the editor of this paper punctuated scripture like some of our "Letters to the Editor" correspondents punctuate letters and articles, you'd be reading in our columns that Paul said, "Let him that stole steal No more let him labor, working with his hands, etc."
—O—
Cold cash
"It is called cold cash because few of us can ever keep it long enough to warm it up."
—Martin A. Ragaway
—O—
Young married folks' class Nearly every church we know seems to have trouble determining just exactly who should, and who should not, go into the "young married folks' " class. For some reason that particular class always has difficulty in deciding who is, and who is not, a "young" married person. For instance, we've just run across a "young married folks' " class in a Colorado church in which a mother, her married daughter, and her married grand-daughter are members! Oh, well, age is often less a matter of years than it is of ideas anyhow. And we think some of the churches act rather silly in trying to set a hard and fast rule on age limits for particular classes. Let the people go where they are happiest.
—O—
Wilson on the Bartlesville school As we have stated repeatedly the Gospel Guardian is not anti-college. Nor will we let our opponents brand us with such a label simply because of our opposition to certain practices of some of the schools which we regard as wrong. We are much in favor of schools operated by Christian men and women, in which young people can have the opportunity to secure an education without the baleful influences of unchristian and even anti-Christian teachers. We are happy to publish in this issue an article from L. R. Wilson, President of Central Christian College, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in which he sets forth the ideals and the need (the immediate need) of this new school. Read his article carefully, and give it the serious consideration it deserves.
—O—
One tiny fault Then there was the troubled soul who came to his preacher for help. It seems the neighbors were talking about his wife, saying simply awful things about her. "And, preacher," the distressed husband said earnestly, "I've lived with that woman for more than twenty years, and outside of one tiny fault she doesn't have a thing wrong with her—no, sir, not a thing in the world! I'll admit that she does have one little fault; she will sometimes, when she gets drunk, cuss a little bit. But outside of that, there's not a thing in the world wrong with her. And I don't like for the neighbors to talk about her!"
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Boy evangelist We are sent a clipping which describes how a preaching brother in Texas is using his little five-year-old son to boost attendance in his meetings. The boy goes through the streets shouting verses of scripture, arousing the curiosity of the people, and is advertised in the newspapers as the "boy evangelist." So far as we are concerned, the preaching of the gospel of Christ is far too serious a matter to be reduced to the level of a freak show or a side-street carnival. The sectarians and the digressives have long since run this "child evangelist" stunt into the ground. We regret to see anybody starting it in the Lord's church. Let the children be taught the scriptures, certainly; but do not let them make a three-ringed circus exhibition of their knowledge as a publicity stunt.
—O—
W. L. Douthitt, Rt. 1, Wilson, Texas: "New Home recently conducted a meeting, James Reynolds, Pueblo, Colo., preaching. Three adults baptized. Great interest."