Sept. 25, 2022, column from the Amarillo Globe-News:

God-driven occurrences appear in the sky, timing after queen's death

By Mike Haynes

                Queen Elizabeth II’s death Sept. 8 and the days of mourning and celebration of her life were marked by some “God things,” I think.

                First were those rainbows that appeared shortly after the 96-year-old Queen of England’s passing was announced. A brilliant one decorated the sky over the large, round tower of Windsor Castle, Elizabeth’s home outside London, just as the British Union Jack flag was being lowered to half-staff.

And a double rainbow materialized at Buckingham Palace, the residence where the queen spent much of each working week, in sight of the Queen Victoria Memorial. A statue of Victoria there is joined by representations of courage, constancy, victory, charity, truth and motherhood – all concepts that certainly applied to Queen Elizabeth, too.

 A TV commentator remarked that it was fitting that the queen died after the pandemic restrictions in the United Kingdom had been lifted, enabling huge crowds to show their love and appreciation from Scotland, where she spent her last days, to London to Windsor and on roadways in between. That’s not to mention the line of people, peaking at seven miles, who waited along the River Thames as long as 24 hours to file past the queen’s coffin in Westminster Hall.

For me, my wife, Kathy, and mother-in-law, Peggy, the timing also seemed appropriate because Elizabeth and our friend, Iris Houghton, died just a month apart. Iris, a 45-year-member of Amarillo’s Paramount Terrace – now Hillside – Christian Church, was 99 when she died in Bryan. As believers, we wonder whether she finally will get to meet the queen in heaven. Iris and Elizabeth both were young women in London who endured German bombing and other hardships of World War II. Elizabeth went on to become queen, while Iris married American solider Wayne Houghton and wound up in Amarillo. (See https://www.amarillo.com/story/news/2016/07/01/sometimes-all-it-takes-faith-god/13185893007/ for my column about the very English woman who made Amarillo her home.)

I can’t say for sure that such occurrences were God-driven, but it makes sense considering the obvious Christian life that Elizabeth lived. As the monarch, she was the official head of the Church of England, but that doesn’t necessarily make a person devout. Her words and actions did.

Queen Elizabeth II

 Consider these comments from two of Elizabeth’s Christmas messages, first in 2000:

“In his early thirties, He was arrested, tortured and crucified with two criminals. His death might have been the end of the story, but then came the resurrection and with it the foundation of the Christian faith.”

And in 2011:

“Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves – from our recklessness or our greed. God sent into the world a unique person – neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a Saviour, with the power to forgive … It is my prayer that on this Christmas day we might all find room in our lives for the message of the angels and for the love of God through Christ our Lord.”

If you’ve seen the TV series, “The Crown,” you know that the queen met American evangelist Billy Graham when he was preaching in London in the 1950s. In Graham’s book, “Just As I Am,” he wrote, “Her official position has prevented her from openly endorsing our Crusade meetings. But by welcoming us and having me preach on several occasions to the royal family at Windsor and Sandringham, she has gone out of her way to be quietly supportive of our mission. …

“I always found her very interested in the Bible and its message. After preaching at Windsor one Sunday, I was sitting next to the Queen at lunch. I told her I had been undecided until the last minute about my choice of sermon and had almost preached on the healing of the crippled man in John 5. Her eyes sparkled and she bubbled over with enthusiasm, as she could do on occasion. ‘I wish you had!’ she exclaimed. ‘That is my favorite story.’”

Elizabeth died just a year and a half after the love of her life, Prince Philip, who was 99.  They were married for 73 years. Philip wasn’t the only man who had a crush on the queen, though. My Texan dad remembers thinking she was pretty cute in her teenage years, as did a British guy named Paul McCartney. The Beatle wrote a ditty at the end of the “Abbey Road” album that included these lines: “Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl, But she doesn’t have a lot to say … I wanna tell her that I love her a lot … Someday I’m gonna make her mine, oh yeah, Someday I’m gonna make her mine.”

The queen’s 4-year-old great-grandson, Prince Louis, had a more serious comment last week. According to his mom, Princess Kate, Louis said, “At least Grannie is with Great-Grandpa now.”

                I believe she is.

* * *

Mike Haynes taught journalism at Amarillo College from 1991 to 2016 and has written for the Faith section since 1997. He can be reached at haynescolumn@gmail.com. Go to www.haynescolumn.blogspot.com for other recent columns.

 

 From The Upbeat Reporter, Fall 2022:

Mission M25

Gary Burd

By Mike Haynes

                Gary Burd constantly looks in all directions. He’s been a pastor or ministry leader for close to half a century, but these days, the church isn’t where his gaze usually falls. Sometimes it’s Israel, sometimes a Navajo reservation, sometimes under a bridge in Amarillo. He takes to heart Jesus’ guidance in Matthew 25 when Christ explains why some people will be blessed by the Father:

                “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

                Burd, his church and Mission M25, named for that Bible chapter, accomplish all those charitable activities and more on a regular basis – sometimes on motorcycles. And the 71-year-old’s founding of Mission M25 is a result of a dramatic change in how Burd viewed the church.

                “I live with my head on a swivel, asking God to show me what I need to do, if I’m broken,” Burd said. “The real key to me is that I don’t do anything because it’s tradition. I do it because I have a broken heart or because I’m being obedient to the Bible.”

He said he believes helping people is the duty of every Christian, not just when they perceive a special calling. “The Bible clearly states that it’s all our job,” he said.

                The Amarillo native followed his father, Lloyd Burd, as pastor of Christian Heritage Church at 900 S. Nelson St. The son was a pastor there for 40 years, 29 of them as lead pastor. In 1999, he had “an earth-shaking experience that changed my direction.”

                One cold, snowy Sunday morning, instead of praying and studying his sermon notes in his office, Burd rode his motorcycle under a bridge where homeless people could be found. He encountered a man named Moses who was dirty from head to foot, including his long beard. He gave Moses a cup of coffee, then took off his gloves and offered them to him.

                “You can’t give me your gloves; it’s cold out here,” the man replied. Burd recalled, “Out of my mouth rolled these words: ‘You can have them, but it’s not for free. I want you to pray for me.’ In a reversal of roles, Moses put his hand on Burd’s shoulder and did pray for him. It led to Burd baptizing him and Burd and other church members getting him off the streets and eventually back to the family from which he had been estranged.

                “I started reading the Bible without my church lens on,” Burd said.  “I read the four gospels and realized I called myself a Christian, but I was in no way like Christ; I was everything like a traditional church. And the Lord began to break me.”

Since then, Burd’s focus has been on helping those who come into his path through Mission M25 and his church. Craig Lawlis is the senior pastor now, but the two ministries go hand in hand, and the sign outside the church now reads “Feed the Need: A City of Refuge.”

            Much of Burd’s outreach has been done on two wheels. A few years ago, he rode in the Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge, a trip based on Lakota Sioux principles of respect, honor, integrity and compassion. The trek covered 10,000 miles from Key West, Florida, to Homer, Alaska. Along the way, Burd visited the Wounded Knee memorial in South Dakota where 150 Native Americans were massacred in 1890.  

            “In that journey, the Lord broke my heart for the Native Americans,” Burd said.

            Later, he connected with a Montana church that was serving Native Americans, eventually leading Burd and Mission M25 to start delivering food, water, firewood and other necessities to a Navajo reservation in western New Mexico. “There are a large number of Native Americans there who have no running water and no electricity,” he said. “That should not happen in America.”

            The ministry and the church also have built 25 chicken coops and given 800 egg-laying hens to the Navajo as well as houses to keep their dogs out of the weather. With the help of Affiliated Foods, three semi-truckloads of food have been hauled to the reservation.

            Mission M25 has done motorcycle rides to support military veterans, the nation of Israel and pro-life causes. Burd and others from Amarillo have ridden in Rolling Thunder and Run for the Wall, both of which honor military veterans, POWs and MIAs, and Mission M25 has provided support for riders.

            In 2017, Burd arranged for 30 motorcycles to be shipped to Israel, and he took 74 people to honor the Israeli Defense Forces. In 2018, a Jewish man in Canada asked Burd to ride with him in “Never Again” rallies to remember the Holocaust. “We stand with Israel,” Burd said.

            For the movement against abortion, Christian Heritage Church in the 1980s ran a program called Breath of Life Defenders (BOLD) to support women who wanted to keep their babies. In 2015, Mission M25 started the 50CC Diaper Ride, a 50-hour motorcycle challenge to raise funds for diapers for Royal Home Ministries in North Carolina.

            Burd and others rode in a pro-life rally from California to Mexicali, Mexico. He said he asked a Mexican pastor this year if such a rally was necessary in his country. “He said, ‘It is now, because we followed the United States.”

            As the ministry reacts to faraway needs, it doesn’t overlook its back yard. Until the pandemic, “we fed homeless people seven days a week, two meals a day, for over 20 years,” Burd said. “And the church has given more than $44 million of food out of the parking lot since COVID hit,” supplied by Affiliated Foods.

            The church offers Free Camp each summer for local children. “We stand against racial, economical and social barriers,” Burd said. “It’s not a church camp for church kids. It’s a camp where we mix church kids with street kids.

            “I’ve slept on the floor of our gymnasium with a kid from an $870,000 house on one side of me and on the other side a kid that lived in a house with cardboard windows. When you cross those kind of barriers, that’s huge.”

Burd’s wife of 52 years, Carolyn, also has taken Free Camp to Africa and the Philippines, and Mission M25 planned a similar camp for Navajo children in New Mexico this summer.

            “I’m deeply convinced that we’ll never solve problems from inside the church. We need to hang with those people on the outside,” he said.

            To that end, Christian Heritage Church and Mission M25 stay on the north side of Amarillo where the need is greatest. And they embrace Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:40:

            “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

 

Sept. 11, 2022, column from the Amarillo Globe-News:

9/11 tragedy united people, but it didn't last

By Mike Haynes

                Almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks 21 years ago today, churches and other houses of worship saw increased attendance. People felt a need to pray about the evil that had just happened and about the uncertain future – and to just gather together.

                But it wasn’t long before, as a New York Times headline said, we returned to “Religion As Usual.” Gallup Poll editor Frank Newport told the Times there was not a “great awakening or a profound change in America’s religious practices.”

This beam from one of the World Trade Center
towers is located in the 9/11 Museum in New York
City. (Photo by Kathy Haynes)

            Likewise, there was a brief time when Republicans and Democrats, black and white, Christians, Jews and Muslims held hands in apparent unity against an outside enemy.

            Overlooking political differences didn’t last long, either, and as the years have passed since 2001, Americans seem to have given up on getting along with each other. On multiple issues, we are at each other’s throats. Traditional values and practices are increasingly vilified. Some people – I believe a small number but with loud megaphones – want not only change but revolution. Another small number who see their history and rights being threatened are willing to use violence to protect their places in society.

            Internationally, Russia and China are more aggressive in pursuing their nations’ agendas. The Chinese Communists appear ready to militarily bring Taiwan back into their fold, and Vladimir Putin’s Russia versus Ukraine already looks like Hitler versus Poland in World War II.

            My wife, Kathy, and I don’t ignore the news, but at suppertime these days, we tend to zone out. We’d rather retreat to Mayberry to watch Andy Taylor and Barney Fife spitting out Aunt Bee’s pickles than be unnerved by the latest crazy thing in the news.

            In the past, Christians of various denominations at least sometimes found common ground and agreed on certain basic human values. Now, abortion divides us, and the term “Christian Nationalists” is tossed around as if being Christian and patriotic are wicked. On many social issues, right is wrong, wrong is right and the world seems turned upside down.

            We can’t even discuss those issues graciously. Social media has removed the restraints on criticism and judgmentalism. Politicians don’t compromise. Friendships like that of Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat Tip O’Neill are rare. Reagan even made progress on nuclear disarmament in part because he got along personally with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. As of last week, both of those men are gone, and few such examples remain.

            America is split to the extent that some say another civil war is coming. Abraham Lincoln, our War Between the States president, famously said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Of course, he took the statement from the New Testament, where Matthew, Mark and Luke all reported those words of Jesus.

            Americans have access to plenty of wise words, even in pop culture. Songwriter Walter Earl Brown provided incentive for peace and harmony in “If I Can Dream,” made famous by Elvis Presley soon after the assassination of presidential candidate Robert Kennedy:

            “If I can dream of a better land, Where all my brothers walk hand in hand, Tell me why, oh why, oh why can't my dream come true. …

            “We're lost in a cloud, With too much rain, We're trapped in a world, That's troubled with pain. But as long as a man has the strength to dream, He can redeem his soul and fly.”

            For that dream to come true, we need a profound change in our stance toward others. World War II anti-Nazi theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood:

            “The first service one owes to others in a community involves listening to them. Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s Word, the beginning of love for others is learning to listen to them.  ... We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them.”

* * *

Mike Haynes taught journalism at Amarillo College from 1991 to 2016 and has written for the Faith section since 1997. He can be reached at haynescolumn@gmail.com. Go to www.haynescolumn.blogspot.com for other recent columns.

 August 28, 2022, column from the Amarillo Globe-News:

The world may have changed, but God hasn't

By Mike Haynes

                “Times are changing. People are changing. We’ve moved on so much from large swaths of the Bible.”

                With those words, English journalist and TV personality Piers Morgan urged evangelist Franklin Graham to get with those changing times and reconsider his views on social and biblical issues. Morgan, who many know from his stint as a judge on “America’s Got Talent” and various other media appearances, was interviewing Graham last month on the News UK program, “Piers Morgan Uncensored” while the son of Billy Graham was in London for his God Loves You UK tour.

Piers Morgan, right, interviewed Franklin Graham in England in July 2022.

                My wife and I both could have predicted Graham’s response:

                “God doesn’t change. He’s the same yesterday, today and forever.”

                That claim comes from the Old and New Testaments, where Malachi 3:6 says, “For I the Lord do not change,” and where Paul extends it in Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.”

                Today, though, some say the Bible is not authoritative and that any words from the past are subject to being altered, reinterpreted or even ignored. We all know how scores of words and terms that formerly didn’t cause a stir now are politically incorrect, and many who have certain political views won’t listen to any arguments or reasoning that come from “old, white men.” Only the new and fresh is on their radar.

                C.S. Lewis (yes, a white man who eventually got “old”), had something to say about that. Arthur Lindsley wrote that one of the famed author’s seven key ideas was “chronological snobbery,” “the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is thereby discredited.”

                Lindsley set forth these questions: “Why did an idea go out of date, and was it ever refuted? If so, where, by whom, and how conclusively?” Lewis suggested that a person should read at least one old book for every three new ones. His point was that humans should not automatically throw away the wisdom and knowledge learned through thousands of years in favor of recent, untested ideas.

                Dr. Mary Dodson, a local English professor, showed a 2014 video to a Bible class last week of university students being asked basic history questions such as “Who won the Civil War?” and “Who is the vice president?” Most didn’t know. But most had no trouble answering what show celebrity Snooki was on and who actor Brad Pitt was married to at the time.

                With brains so unburdened with even basic facts, how would they be able to intelligently compare “old” ideas to “new” ideas? And how would they be able to judge the truth or fallacy of the words of the Bible?

                Consider a quote from George Orwell’s 1948 novel, “1984”: “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” That reshaping of the culture is easy to do when much of society knows more about Angelina Jolie than who fought against whom in the Civil War.

And according to Dodson, the gradual destruction of traditional values and beliefs stems primarily from the stealthy rise of Marxism, which values groups over individuals, and postmodernism, which denies the validity of “metanarratives” such as the grand, unfolding story of the Bible and says there is no objective truth.

With no universal truth, people have “my truth” and “your truth,” no one should be judged, and everything is relative. So old paper documents such as the U.S. Constitution and the Hebrew and Christian scriptures really have no meaning and are subject to revision or rejection.

                Piers Morgan’s opinion that a preacher should move on from “outdated” parts of the Bible isn’t surprising in our increasingly secular society. Some politicians have argued that the United States is not a Christian nation, and since the Marxist-postmodern movement started gaining ground in the 1960s, their assertion becomes more accurate every day.

                For some of us, that’s alarming – and sad.

 Aug. 14, 2022, column from the Amarillo Globe-News:

Billy Sunday knocked it out of the park as an evangelist

By Mike Haynes

                One of my most embarrassing moments as a Texas Tech University student – probably even more so than when the campus cops caught me and a group of fellow students from my hometown playing touch football on the new AstroTurf of Jones Stadium – was in my first freshman history class.

                I was impressed by the professor, a relatively young man who exuded passion as he told fascinating anecdotes about people in U.S. history instead of just going through a timeline of battles, laws and elections. I wish I could remember his name.

Billy Sunday, Major Leaguer

                We had to write a paper about a well-known American, then give a class presentation on it. Always on the lookout to promote Christianity, I chose the evangelist Billy Sunday as my topic.

                I suppose speaking to a class makes most college freshmen nervous, and that certainly was true of me. And it got embarrassing when I told the class that Billy Sunday’s family had immigrated from Germany and that their name had been changed from Sonntag to Sunday. I wish I hadn’t added, “I have no idea why they changed it to Sunday.”

                Another student quickly spoke up: “Sonntag is German for Sunday.”

                I had taken some Spanish in high school and was enrolled in a college French class, so I might not have looked so dumb if the name origin had been “Domingo” or “Dimanche,” but I knew nothing about German.

                I’m sure now that my paper and presentation were pretty rudimentary, but I made an “A” in the course, so it wasn’t a disaster. And I learned that Billy Sunday was quite a remarkable character.

                Born in poverty near Ames, Iowa, in 1862, Sunday was fast and agile, and he became an outstanding baseball player. The Chicago White Stockings signed him in 1883, and he played for the Pittsburgh Alleghenys and the Philadelphia Phillies. His career batting average was only .248, but he was known for his speedy base-running. While at Pittsburgh, a reporter wrote that “the whole town is wild over Sunday.”

                While in Chicago, Sunday heard street preachers who inspired him to attend church. He started speaking at churches and YMCAs, and according to historian Lyle Dorsett, he turned down a $3,500 a year baseball contract to work for the Chicago YMCA for $83 a month. From then on, Sunday was a preacher first.

                According to christianitytoday.com., a newspaper story said, “Center fielder Billy Sunday made a three-base hit at Farwell Hall last night. There is no other way to express the success of his first appearance as an evangelist in Chicago.”

Billy Sunday, evangelist

                Sunday was flamboyant as he spoke in tents and wooden tabernacles, striking dramatic poses and preaching forcefully with sometimes crude language. Reflecting William Tyndale’s 16^th century desire that even English plowboys should know the Bible, Sunday said, “I want to preach the gospel so plainly that men can come from the factories and not have to bring a dictionary.”

                One of Sunday’s many one-liners, used by many preachers since, was, “Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.”

                He fit the category of “evangelical,” ending each revival service with an impassioned plea for those present to “walk the sawdust trail” to the front of the venue to accept the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. He opposed playing cards, attending movies, women dressing immodestly and especially drinking alcohol.

                Sunday has been called a strong influence on getting Prohibition passed in the United States in 1920. “To know what the devil will do, find out what the saloon is doing,” he said.

                But he wasn’t in lockstep with all conservative Christians of the time. Sunday backed women’s suffrage and ending child labor. He invited all races to his services, even in the South, supported Jews and considered Roman Catholics his fellow Christians. According to christianitytoday.com, he rejected the theory of evolution but didn’t go so far as endorsing “Genesis literalists.”

            Billy Sunday was to the first half of the 20^th century what Billy Graham was to the second half. He preached to millions and led an estimated 300,000 people to belief in Christ. Other than my ignorance about his name, I don’t recall what I told my history class many years ago. But I’m sure I read aloud some of his quotes like these:

            • “I’m against sin. I’ll kick it as long as I have a foot. I’ll fight it as long as I have a fist. I’ll butt it as long as I have a head. I’ll bite it as long as I’ve got a tooth. And when I’m old and fistless and footless and toothless, I’ll gum it ’til I go home to glory and it goes home to perdition.”

• “Nowadays we think we are too smart to believe in the virgin birth of Jesus and too well educated to believe in the resurrection. That's why people are going to the devil in multitudes.”