Not The Problem You Think

Rusell Moore at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has an excellent post about the problems with Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Rather than Wright's inane political statements (which have garnered the lion's share of the attention), Moore focuses on the bigger problem: Wright's liberation theology.

As Moore describes,

Liberation theology is seeker sensitive. The first waves of this movement, in Latin America, were designed to make Christianity appealing to the people by addressing their felt needs, the desire for armed revolution and Marxist economics. Liberation theology only works if one can connect with real or perceived oppression and then make the Scripture illustrative of how to navigate out of that situation. The Kingdom of God is a means to a social, economic, or political end.

It's a real problem, and it's overtaking more churches than just Obama's.

Just take a look at the best-selling authors in evangelical Christian bookstores. Listen for a minute or two at the parade of preachers on Christian television and radio. What are they promising? Your best life now. What are they preaching about? How to be authentic. How to make good career choices. How Hillary Clinton fits in Bible prophecy.

How many times have we all heard from pulpits the Bible used in exactly the way that Jeremiah Wright uses it, except perhaps in reverse? Jeremiah Wright uses the Scripture as a background to get to what he thinks is the real issue, psychological or economic or political liberation from American oppression. Others use the Scripture as a background to get to what they think is the real issue, psychological or economic or political liberation through the American Dream. Either way, Jesus is a footnote to get to what the preacher deems really important, be it national health care or support for Israel. Either way, apart from the Gospel, the end result is hell for the hearer, regardless of whether God damns or blesses America.

Jeremiah Wright's liberation theology strikes us because it sounds so offensive to our American ears. But the idolotry from many evangelical pulpits ought to sound just as offensive to our Christian ears.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Russell Moore Jeremiah Wright

Hitting The Links

• Adam Goldberg at MSNBC.com asks the same question I asked two years ago: whatever happened to John Hughes?
  (Hat tip: Bud)

• Here's an affecting, engrossing story about a son's autism in Salon. Though I don't really resonate with the semi-theological angle to the story (and it's written from a decidedly secular perspective), I found it unusually well-written and touching. Strangely, Mark Dever, of all people, even makes a surprise appearance. (Warning: the story does contain one strong vulgarity.)

• If you want to have some fun, read a few articles by the Jewish agnostic mathematician David Berlinski. He's one of the critics of Darwinian theory featured in the Ben Stein movie "Expelled," and he's just delightful to read. In this interview with himself, Berlinski discusses Richard Dawkins' statements of wonder at the materialistic universe:

  Why should Dawkins, of all people, find the universe wonderful if he also believes it is largely a self-sustaining material object, something bigger than a head of cabbage but not appreciably different in kind? The whole place supposedly has no meaning, no point, no purpose, and no reason for its existence beyond itself. Sounds horrible to me. Wonder is the last reaction I’d expect. It’s like being thrilled by Newark, New Jersey. A universe that is nothing more than a collection of atoms whizzing around in the void is a material slum.

• This is weeks old by now (hey, cut me a break--I was on hiatus) and many of you have already seen it, but if you haven't, I highly recommend the recent interview with N.T. Wright in TIME magazine on Heaven. Wright explains his view (with which I agree) that the typical Christian view of the afterlife is a "distortion and serious diminution of Christian hope."

• Watch as an improv troupe stages a spontaneous musical at a mall food court. From the same people who brought you the freaky sudden mass freezing at Grand Central Terminal. (HT: Challies)

• Yikes, who's that guy?

• Don't miss the growing comments section from my Jeremiah Wright post, where our resident atheist Sam once again has his lunch eaten by a swarm of people who recognize the folly of him declaring certain actions "right" and "wrong" under his own naturalistic, evolutionary presuppositions. When all you have are atoms bouncing together, there's no "ought"--only "is." But Sam and many of his fellow atheists can't seem to resist pronouncing grand "oughts" anyway. The discussion is instructive to read, to say the least.

Mark Dever Salon John Hughes David Berlinski Richard Dawkins N.T. Wright Heaven

Left or Lefter

The New York Times has jumped in to remind deludedly optimistic conservatives about John McCain's party-hopping flirtations in recent years:

What Mr. McCain almost never mentions are two extraordinary moments in his political past that are at odds with the candidate of the present: His discussions in 2001 with Democrats about leaving the Republican Party, and his conversations in 2004 with Senator John Kerry about becoming Mr. Kerry’s running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket.

There are wildly divergent versions of both episodes, depending on whether Democrats or Mr. McCain and his advisers are telling the story. The Democrats, including Mr. Kerry, say that not only did Mr. McCain express interest but that it was his camp that initially reached out to them. Mr. McCain and his aides counter that in both cases the Democrats were the suitors and Mr. McCain the unwilling bride.

Yeah, yeah, it's the Times, but the story is fully sourced and on-the-record. At the very least, it's a disturbing portrait of a guy who seems to elevate personal grudges above principle. Hey, I think I saw that presidency...back when it was called "Richard Nixon." How'd that go, anyway?

John McCain

And He Always Had Some Mighty Fine Wine

Though he's obviously a tremendous kook, I've found myself a bit uneasy about much of the reaction to the Jeremiah Wright controversy that's been reverberating for several news cycles now. Doug Wilson is putting a finger on the problem in a couple of very insightful posts.

Writes Wilson:

...the most damaging clip was the one in which Jeremiah Wright was railing against the United States, saying, "God damn America for . . . God damn America for . . ." followed by a litany of of die-hard leftist complaints. But what is the real problem here? I recall Billy Graham's wife once saying, "If God doesn't judge America, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah." The real reason for the indignation directed at Wright was because he simply said God damn America, not for the screwed-up reasons he had for saying it. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson got a similar reaction when they said something similar after 911. Suppose Wright had said, "God damn America for the abortion carnage. God damn America for sodomite marriages." Now what? Wright is being condemned, not for having the list of sins wrong (which he did), but for being un-American with a camera running.

In another post he writes:

During the Clinton years, it was de rigeur for conservatives to assume that the government was actively involved in cold-blooded murder -- Vince Foster, Ron Brown, not to mention a large percentage of the people connected to Bill's Arkansas drug-running ring. But if someone on the left makes a charge like this, the central problem for the Fox indignants is not the craziness of the charge itself -- pretend the Rev. Wright had said that the CIA had embedded microwave transmissions in iPods that targetted blacks specifically. That kind of thing is what seems to me to be the real problem -- not charges per se, but nutjob charges. But the reaction to this is "how dare he believe our duly-elected government is capable of this?" But our duly-elected government has the blood of forty million infants on its hands, and counting. Why are we talking about "capability"?

I think Wilson's got it exactly right. The problem with Wright shouldn't be that he thinks something is wrong with America. It's that he's so bass ackwards on what is wrong with America.

Jeremiah Wright Doug Wilson

"Expelled"

Last week at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville, I (along with hundreds of others) was treated to a screening of the new Ben Stein documentary film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." The Darwinists are already soiling themselves over it, meaning that we should be in for some fireworks when the movie is released April 18th.

I can't recommend the film highly enough. It's well-made, entertaining, funny, profound, and fearless. And it shows the current, dominant Darwinian establishment for what it is: ruthless ideology disguised as science. "Expelled" profiles several accomplished scientists who are being (or already have been) drummed out of their institutions for daring to question the fundamentalist Darwinian view that only accidental mutations over time (filtered through the "mechanism" of natural selection) are ultimately responsible for the complexity of biological life that we observe today. This view, while grounded on a philosophical (and unprovable and self-contradictory) assumption that only what is physical is real, is imperialistically advanced by its proponents to the point that any dissent whatsoever is cause for punishment. "Expelled" marvelously exposes some of the leading "lights" in this movement, in many cases allowing them to hang themselves on their own words. This film pulls the mask off of "dispassionate science" and exposes the leaders of the Darwinian establishment for the close-minded fundamentalists they really are

One great example: In the most telling moment in the film, uber-atheistic biologist Richard Dawkins (who elsewhere has said that "the products of Darwinian natural selection look so stunningly as though they have been designed for a purpose") stunnigly admits in an interview with Stein that it is possible that the first cell (which would have been amazingly complex) could have been designed--but if it was, it was designed by people from outer space who themselves evolved completely naturally somewhere else. In other words, there might be a designer somewhere for the biology we see in our world (since they sure do seem to be designed), but under no circumstances could that designer possibly be God. And this is what passes for cold, hard, rational, almighty "science" these days.

Amusingly, the only tack the Darwinists seem to be able to take in attacking the movie (since it uses their own on-camera statements to hang them) is to call it a "creationist" film, as if simply the product of fundamentalist Christians. It's a nice try, but hosted by Ben Stein, and featuring experts critical of Darwinism like the self-described secular Jew David Berlinski, the charge won't hold much water. The fact is, after decades of Darwinian hegemony over the educational establishment, the vast majority of the American public still doubts the establishment's account. Though the Darwinists would like to make it seem as if the reason for this is that we're simply a country full of addle-pated animists, the fact is that they've never overcome the major holes in their theory, and the public knows that mere assertion doesn't equal proof.

"Expelled" opens April 18th. See it early and see it often, as the old saying sort of goes.

Expelled Ben Stein David Berlinski Richard Dawkins

On The Air

If you're a glutton for punishment, you can listen live to a radio show I'll be hosting in South Florida a little later today. It runs from 12:30pm-2pm Eastern time, and my guests will be New Testament scholar D.A. Carson, Michael Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association, and a guy who runs several crisis pregancy centers that Eliot Spitzer tried to shut down as the attorney general of New York.

Just go here and click on the streaming audio on the upper right hand side of the page.

Anyone? Anyone?

I attended the National Religious Broadcaster's convention this week in Nashville. On Tuesday, the president of the United States came to speak to us.

But for my money, this was even cooler:



Incidentally, I'll have more later on Ben Stein's new film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. But for the moment, let me just say that it is must-viewing.

Even Longer Than The War

Today, I notice, marks my five-year blogoversary. I believe it was the comedian Norm Crosby who once noted, "We gather here together to celebrate this suspicious occasion..."

If you take out the baseball posts and factor in the last two years, I'm actually averaging about nine annual substantive posts. I was blogging before blogging was cool. And now I'm still here blogging long after blogging stopped being cool.

Wow. Five years of trying to find different and unique ways of calling people stupid. We couldn't be prouder.

The Real McCain

Well, the Republican Party completed its suicide last night, finally pushing John McCain forward for the nomination. Mark my words: it will be the biggest landslide loss since Dukakis.

It will be sad to watch people in the coming days throw away their integrity and credibility by pretending that McCain is a good, conservative candidate. I won't be playing that game, and while I might ultimately hold my nose and vote for him, I'll never like him. Cries of "but at least he's not Hillary" are still ringing in my ears. Really? He's not? Whoop de doo.

Since there will be a lot of nonsense coming from the Republican Party establishment in the coming months about what a great Reagan conservative McCain is, I offer the following list for your future reference. You can print it up and carry it around in your wallet to counter all the lies Republican cheerleaders will be selling come summer. Despite the coming propaganda onslaught, when I look at McCain, I still see:

• The unconstitutional McCain-Feingold law, which prohibits free speech in times closest to an election when it’s most important

• That he flirted with switching parties in ‘01 (and in fact, his ’00 campaign political director did switch parties in ’02)

• That the Kerry campaign seriously flirted with offering him their VP slot in ‘04

• That he was one of the “Gang of 14” in the Senate that shut down the Republican effort to end filibustering on judicial nominees (the so-called “nuclear option”) and instead reached a compromise with Dems that led to a number of Bush’s qualified judicial nominees being forever cast aside

• That he voted against allowing a full Senate vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment

• That he has said that, while against abortion, he does not support the repeal of Roe v. Wade

• That he supports embryonic stem cell research and fetal tissue research

• That he has been called by the gay magazine The Advocate “notoriously pro-gay”

• That he was endorsed by the Log Cabin Republicans in ‘00

• That he chaired the silly global warming Senate hearings in ’04 and supports global warming legislation

• That he supported amnesty for illegals

• That he was reported by more than one source to have said that he might not nominate the likes of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court because Alito “wore his conservatism on his sleeve.”

• That he was one of only two Republican senators (the other was Lincoln Chaffee) to vote against President Bush’s tax cut in ‘01

• That he was only one of three Republican senators to again vote against tax cuts in ’03.

Even on his supposedly biggest asset with social conservatives--his "pro-life" record--he's been highly overrated. In addition to the aforementioned support for fetal tissue and embryonic stem cell research and his opposition to overturning Roe v. Wade, he's given off signs that his ostensible opposition to abortion is less than ironclad. This very telling comment comes from a 2004 article in the liberal online Slate magazine, in an article written to assure liberals that John McCain is really one of them:

Democrats alarmed by crossover affection for McCain usually begin by complaining about his down-the-line anti-abortion voting record. But McCain's smoke signals spell out something different—an unsuccessful attempt to back away from a mandatory position he no longer believes in, if he ever really did. In August 1999, McCain said, "I'd love to see a point where Roe v. Wade is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations." This wasn't a fluke comment—McCain said the same thing more than once. But his trial balloon was quickly shot down by the theo-cons, prompting him to abandon the experiment. The same thing happened again following McCain's suggestion that the nutty Republican platform plank on the topic be rewritten, and again after he made the comment that if his daughter—who was 15 at the time—became pregnant, it would be up to her to decide whether to have an abortion. Despite his professions of fidelity, the pro-life lobby knows better than to trust him. Pro-choicers should similarly recognize that McCain is a hostage, not a hostage-taker, on this issue.

He's an utter disaster, and he's going to lose 40 states. Someday Republicans will again wake up and realize that conservatism wins. In the meantime, they should be preparing to get beaten this year like a trailer wife on COPS.

John McCain conservatism 2008 election Republicans

Postponed

Sadly, Rickles came down ill last night, so the show was postponed. Hopefully they'll reschedule it soon (though they'd better do it quickly--the guy's 82). In the meantime, I consoled myself by watching things on YouTube like the following. As always, there is something there to offend everybody. I also think Ed McMahon was going through a divorce at the time:

Mr. Warmth

As a gift for our wedding anniversary, my wife is taking me to see Don Rickles tonight at the Hard Rock. Whatta gal! My wife feels the same way about Don Rickles that most wives feel about Don Rickles, making this a supremely altruistic and loving gesture on her part.

Which reminds me of my favorite Don Rickles story which he told many times on talk shows about his friend Frank Sinatra. I'm approximating it from memory, but this is pretty close to the way he tells it:

I’m with a date in Las Vegas in the early 60’s. I’m out with this girl, and we’ve brought her parents with us to a fancy restaurant. I see Frank Sinatra on the other side of the restaurant. Everyone’s buzzing with excitement. I get up to go to the bathroom and sneak over to where Frank’s sitting. I say to him, "Hey, Frank, I’m on a date with this girl I really like and her parents are with us too. I hate to ask you this, but it would really be great, and it would really impress them, if you’d just come over and say hello for a minute."

He says, "Of course, Don, anything."

"Gosh, I sure appreciate it, Frank. You're the best," I tell him.

I go back and sit down and we’re eating and I’m telling her parents a story, and a here comes Frank over to say hello. He walks up to the table and says, "Hey, Don, how ya doin'?"

I stop in the middle of my story, turn to him, and say, "Geez, Frank, not now! Can’t you see I’m with people?"

Don Rickles Frank Sinatra

Oh My

We've lost William F. Buckley, (arguably) the most important conservative of the 20th century. In the coming days, many will try to summarize the effect he's had, but it will be almost impossible to do. I do not think it is far-fetched to say that without Buckley, there's no Reagan. In fact, without Buckley, there's probably no modern conservative movement.

This is most unexpected and saddening, indeed. He's been writing right up until the present.

Nor The Son Of One

At the risk of sounding self-congratulatory, here's something I wrote the morning after the 2006 elections, about a year and a half ago:

My suspicion is that Republicans are going to try to move to the Left as a result of this election (pointing to the defeats of swing-staters Jim Talent and Rick Santorum as justification), culminating in the nomination of John McCain for president in 2008. If they do, it will officially mark the end of the Republicans' 21st century dominance, as conservative and evangelical voters will have even more reason to sit it out.

If they're smart, however (and I frankly see no evidence of that), they'll see this as a well-timed wakeup call to begin becoming conservative again to reinvigorate their underwhelmed base. Fortunately for them, this was not a presidential election year. They still have time to right the ship (and it does need to be turned Right) in time to avert an era of disaster.

We'll see what they decide to do. I'm not optimistic.

Sadly, I was quite correct. John McCain is going to be the nominee. Between now and the election, many "conservatives" who have great unease about McCain are going to convince themselves that he'd really be pretty good after all, and more and more will "get in line" with the Party. But understand this: McCain is going to lose this election in a 40 state landslide. I'm not kidding. Think about it--which states do you see McCain carrying in November against, say, Barack Obama? I'll give you Arizona. Find me nine more (let alone 20 or 30 more). And that's not even including the specter we'll be treated to in the general election, with John McCain and Barack Obama directly competing with one another on the campaign trail. Obama next to McCain is like a supernova next to a dingy ten-watt light bulb swinging from a cord in a warehouse basement.

Someday someone is going to wake up and realize that in years when the Republicans run as conservatives ('80, '84, '88, '00, '04) they win. And in years when they run as moderates ('76, '92, '96), they get slaughtered. The Republicans are absolutely going to get their clocks cleaned come November. And frankly, it's probably the best thing that could happen to them.

John McCain Barack Obama conservatism 2008 election

Can I Take Your Order?

I don't exactly know why, but every time I watch this, I find myself laughing uncontrollably:

Rip Van Winkle

Well. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and I hope you had a nice Valentine's day. It looks like I needed a little bit of a blog break. I hadn't entirely planned to take one, but it just turned out that way. Did I miss anything while I was gone? Anything new happen in the presidential race since last October? Did the Patriots finish off that undefeated season I was expecting? Have they named any names yet in baseball's steroids investigation? How's that Heath Ledger "Batman" movie coming along?

I'm hoping to get back to more semi-regular posting. We'll see how it goes. Bouncing around on the web today (and recently), I see:

• Finally, there's a much-needed takedown of that obnoxious little twit Franky Schaeffer. So your dad didn't play catch with you enough when you were growing up. Suck it up, Skippy.

• It looks like we may have to put the global warming hysteria into hiatus at least until we get past the ice age that seems to be blowing through.

• Christiane Amanpour of CNN gets a tour of a North Korean nuclear facility. She writes:

  For a nation President Bush labeled as part of the "axis of evil," it was not an impressive sight: a dilapidated concrete hulk, built with few resources back in the early '80s
  
  ....Parts of the plant are now dismantled, wrapped in plastic and put into storage
  
  ....It seems a far cry from the hostility conjured by the axis of evil.

  Right. What an idiot that Bush was when he called them that. Why, their stuff is practically falling apart. Of course, buried in the ninth paragraph is this little note, about this harmless little country Bush was so irrationally ramped up about:

  And we even were shown the reprocessing plant where plutonium was extracted from the rods, plutonium that was used for nuclear weapons, the chief engineer admitted.

  I wonder if it's possible that the reactor is in disrepair because President Bush's campaign against North Korea's nuclear program actually worked?

• Doug Wilson wrote something a few weeks ago which ought to light a few fires. I don't always agree with him, but when he's good, he's really good:

  Whenever the radical agenda or the slow encroachment of the state are advanced by the liberals, a large number of conservatives oppose them, sometimes effectively. When we elect the kind of "conservatives" who are just methodical, plodding liberals, this has the effect to consolidating and sealing the previous advances of the radical agenda. A good example of this is the issue of women in combat, something that Scripture calls an abomination (Dt. 22:5). This used to be controversial just ten years ago, and it was the Bush administration that settled the issue, putting it beyond our reach.
  
  ....The fact that I will not vote for McCain or Romney has to do with my judgment (which could certainly be in error) that the effect of their election will be to consolidate and institutionalize some of the central problems in our culture, and that this will happen to even a greater degree than if we get a liberal president. In short, I would rather have a real enemy than a false savior.

Before flipping out, I think it would do us well to consider what he's saying in light of the trajectory of things over the last 40 years or so.

Frank Schaeffer global warming Christiane Amanpour North Korea Doug Wilson

Say What?

Here's my favorite headline of the day, from the AP (via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch):

Report: Abstinence not curbing teen sex

Ummmm...actually, it is. Wherever abstinence occurs, there is zero teen sex. By definition. You can look it up.

They're Really Dropping Now

I haven't had any free time to post in ages, but I couldn't let one addition--er, subtraction--go unnoticed on my "I Can't Believe They're Still Alive" list. Everyone who is still alive on this list, please take one step forward.

Not so fast, Mr. Bishop..

• Joey Bishop

• Doris Day

• Harry Morgan

• James Arness

• Conrad Bain

• Jack LaLanne

• John Forsythe

• Rose Marie

• Al Molinaro

• Barbara Billingsley

• Karl Malden

• Larry Storch

I also heard that Deborah Kerr died the other day. She was not on my list. I honestly didn't know she was still alive. She would've been perfect!

Another One Bites The Dust

A new change to the "I Can't Believe They're Still Alive" list. Everyone who is still alive on this list, please take one step forward.

Not so fast, Ms. Wyman.

• Joey Bishop

• Doris Day

• Harry Morgan

• James Arness

• Conrad Bain

• Jack LaLanne

• John Forsythe

• Rose Marie

• Al Molinaro

• Barbara Billingsley

• Karl Malden

• Jane Wyman

• Larry Storch

Houston, We Have A Problem

From a question & answer column in TIME Magazine with Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin:

Given what happened with Lisa Nowak, should astronauts be held to a higher standard? —Chad Miller, COLOGNE, GERMANY

Astronauts are not superhuman. They lead ordinary lives and have varied personalities. I think Nowak should be admired for traveling across the country at night and not getting out of her car to put in gas or go to the restroom. It is not excusable, but it is understandable for an achiever to fall into a trap.

Of course, I'm not going to disagree with him. Buzz doesn't like disagreement:



Related tags: Buzz Aldrin Lisa Nowak TIME Magazine

Well Done, Good And Faithful Servant

D. James Kennedy died yesterday at the age of 76. I had the privilege of working for Dr. Kennedy for the past six years.

A lot has been written in the last two days (and particularly good are the remembrances by Al Mohler, Sam Lamerson, and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel), and much more will be written. I just wanted to share two stories which give a glimpse from my own limited viewpoint of the impact of Dr. Kennedy's life and passion. The first story shows the sheer scale of his impact, and the second shows the individual side.

Two years ago I visited Tanzania, Africa for the first time. The village we were working in was called Kyela. To get there, one must fly into Dar Es Salaam on the East Coast of and then drive 10 hours on a two-lane road into the interior of the country, near the border of Malawi. It's quite rugged there, with many people living in bamboo homes with dirt floors.

A friend and I stayed in the tin-roofed home of a local Baptist pastor. His home was among the nicer I'd seen. It had no running water, but it had been wired with electricity about a year before which powered a dim, fluorescent light bulb hanging above us in his small, concrete floor living room. My friend had known this pastor for some years, but it was my first time meeting him. He was asking what I did for a living in the United States, and I was trying to explain it to him, but I don't think it was quite getting through.

My friend, trying to help, interjected, "John works for D. James Kennedy, who is on television in the United States and is a very highly regarded pastor there." He explained a little bit about Dr. Kennedy's work, and about how preachers sometimes get shown on television in the U.S. The African pastor suddenly got a glint in his eye.

"Oh, I know Dr. Kennedy," he said, matter-of-factly. My friend and I looked at each other in astonishment. How could he possibly know Dr. Kennedy out here in the middle of nowhere, a place it had taken us three full days to reach from Ft. Lauderdale? The pastor got up and went in to his room. When he came back, he showed us a small object in his hand. It was an Evangelism Explosion pin. Not only had he taken EE; he'd been a trainer.

And the second anecdote, showing the individual side. Though he headed a worldwide media ministry, Dr. Kennedy cared about individual people. Often when people heard I worked for him, they'd ask me what he was like "in real life." This is the story I usually tell them:

A couple of years ago, we were shooting on location up in Yorktown and Williamsburg, Virginia for a Christian history special. In television, it sometimes takes hours to set up all the equipment before anything can be shot. During the technical setup, which was at the historic Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, Dr. Kennedy remained at the hotel in preparation for what was sure to be a gruelling, all-day project.

When everything was finally ready, I was designated to go pick Dr. Kennedy up back at the hotel. I drove back and went up to his room and got him. Because of his bad back, it was often difficult for him to walk long distances, and it was already quite a hike from his hotel room down to the lobby—it was one of those hotels with long corridors. When we got down to the lobby, I told him I’d pull the car right up to the front door so he wouldn’t have to traipse across the parking lot. I ran out and pulled the car up to the door and waited. And waited. And waited some more. After a few minutes (we were in danger of running late for the shoot now), I went inside to check on him. He was standing at the concierge desk talking to the young woman sitting behind it. Mildly exasperated, I approached them, and as I was about to gently and respectfully suggest that we were late and needed to get going, I realized what he was doing. He was sharing the gospel with her.

I sneaked over to a lobby chair where I was out of the way and waited for them. I saw him then praying with her. She prayed to receive Christ. Obviously, you can’t know for sure what’s going on in somebody’s heart, but she was willing to bow her head and pray right there at her work station in the lobby, and she seemed exuberant when they were done and I finally went over to pull him away.

This was late in his life and ministry after his many accomplishments were already long-secured and mostly in the past. There wasn’t anybody else there watching him. I was the only staff member, and I had gone to get the car. He didn’t do it because he felt like it was expected of him or that he had to be seen doing it. It really was just who the man was. He had a crew of 25 people waiting for him on location, but he was willing to stop to talk to that one girl to tell her about the gift of eternal life.

That was D. James Kennedy.

After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. "Master," he said, "you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more."

His master replied, "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!" (Matthew 25:19-21, NIV)

Related tags: D. James Kennedy Evangelism Explosion