Dec. 19, 2021, column in the Amarillo Globe-News:

Some thoughts about Christmas and the birth of Jesus

By Mike Haynes

                A couple of Christmas observations:

                REAL JESUS – I think the nativity set’s stable that my mother put out every December for decades was made of sturdy cardboard, and the animals, shepherds, Wise Men, Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus were painted ceramic figures. The presentation was rustic but a little cleaned up from what the real thing would have looked – and smelled – like.

                Since Kathy and I have been married, we’ve had a respectful but kind of cartoonish set of nativity characters displayed on a desk each year until this season, when I gave Kathy a new, shiny, more elegant holy family that we can add to gradually.

                I even have some 2.25-inch nativity figures created by a toy soldier company that are realistic except for the lack of dirt or grime on the neatly painted metal models.

                There is nothing at all wrong with those representations of the birth of Christ, the manger scenes around the country or the multitudes of Christmas pageants with cute boys and girls playing angels and shepherds. Columnist Gene Shelburne pointed out last week, however, that the sanitized version of the Christmas story creates icons – shepherds, camels, three kings, the baby and his parents – that sometimes are lumped into the same holiday wonderland as Santa Claus, reindeer and Frosty the Snowman.

                It’s too easy to enjoy the cuteness and beauty and forget that the nativity story is a real occurrence that happened 2,000 years ago in the gritty town of Bethlehem – which still exists – in the real country of Israel – where artifacts confirming biblical history continue to be dug up.

                Movies also have tended to show romanticized versions of Jesus’ birth. The 1977 film, “Jesus of Nazareth,” has a good amount of dirt and a splintery manger, but what I remember about it is its beauty.

                This year’s “Christmas with The Chosen: The Messengers,” which has done well at the box office in competition with more mainstream movies, comes the closest I’ve seen to making Joseph and Mary and their surroundings seem like people and places that come out of history instead of from a pretty renaissance painting.

                When the young, pregnant woman and her husband find out they don’t have a place to stay in Bethlehem, the actors, played by Sara Anne and Raj Bond, show genuine distress, just as a modern couple might when discovering every hotel room in town is booked because of the biggest college football game of the year.

                Joseph’s face is sweaty and grungy, and Mary moves gingerly as an expectant mother would. When they finally settle on a stable for the night, Joseph complains as he scoops manure off the dirt floor to make room for Mary’s blankets.

                As the holy moment arrives, Mary is deep-breathing and in pain as a wide-eyed Joseph wonders what to do. The scene remains G-rated, but we hear the sounds of birth, and the baby that Joseph presents to his wife still needs cleaning off.

                The more accurate portrayal of a human birth and the other true-to-life scenes might be more likely to influence doubters toward the reality of the Christian faith. In fact, that’s true of the entire “Chosen” series, which until this episode in theaters has been only on YouTube and a streaming app.

* * *

                CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS – Timothy Larsen brings up a reverse take on the typical lament that society is taking Christ out of Christmas. In this month’s “Christianity Today” magazine, the Wheaton College teacher who is the editor of “The Oxford Handbook of Christmas” says that despite the commercialism and secularism of the holiday, Christmas is the most Christian time of the year.

                In his essay, “No One Took Christ Out of Christmas,” Larsen points out that even the U.S. government recognizes a Christian sacred day as a federal holiday, churches typically have their largest attendance at Christmas, and some radio stations that normally play rock or pop music switch to Christmas songs in December. “Jeremiah was a bullfrog” becomes “Joy to the world! The Savior reigns.”

                “In our culture, Christmas is the least secular time of the entire year,” Larsen writes.” And the Christmas season takes up 10 percent of the year!”

                If we do worry about Christ disappearing from Christmas, he says, one action we can take is to make our own celebrations more centered on Christ. At least in our own homes, we can follow the second headline on Larsen’s essay and make this season “The Most Jesusy Time of Year.”

 Dec. 5, 2021, column:

Author C.S. Lewis was 'The Most Reluctant Convert'

By Mike Haynes

                If you’d like a relatively detailed account of how a person traveled over several years from atheism to belief in a vague supreme being to commitment to Jesus Christ as God, I recommend C.S. Lewis’s book, “Surprised by Joy.”

                Those who’ve seen the “Shadowlands” movie starring Anthony Hopkins as Lewis and Debra Winger as Joy, the woman he married, may be thinking, “Oh, ‘Surprised by Joy’ must be about the famous Christian author finding love late in life.”

                It isn’t. The “Joy” in the title refers to a deep desire or longing that can be fulfilled only by God and not completely until we are in heaven with him. Lewis takes readers on a journey from his childhood through his battlefield service in World War I to his experience as an Oxford University student and then professor, with each period of his life bringing him closer to that divine joy that he doesn’t think he wants.

                For a condensed but still well-explained version of Lewis’s spiritual journey, I would look for a chance to see the new film, “The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis.”

                The movie had a short local run in November. It stars Eddie Ray Martin playing Lewis as a child, when his mother’s death was a traumatic experience; Nicholas Ralph as a teen and young adult Lewis, whose friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien and others at Oxford helped draw him nearer to God; and Max McLean as Lewis in his later years.

                PBS viewers may recognize Ralph from his portrayal of James Herriot in the current series, “All Creatures Great and Small.”

McLean also narrates the film, using much of the same dialogue that he does in his one-man stage version of “The Most Reluctant Convert,” from which the movie grew. McLean founded Fellowship for Performing Arts in New York City and performs other Lewis and Christian live shows. From his association with the C.S. Lewis Foundation, he has friends in Amarillo; he’ll see some of them again July 28-Aug. 5, when he participates in the C.S. Lewis Summer Institute at Oxford.

                Not all of us go through such a painstaking, thorough analysis of the meaning of life, the possibility of supernatural events and the study of what is true and what isn’t. Lewis, the rigorous intellectual, did. He had grown up in Ireland in a Christian home but had rejected Christianity, probably influenced by the inexplicable loss of his mother and the horrors he witnessed in the trenches of World War I.

His book, “Surprised by Joy,” takes us from a childhood filled with details of everyday life to a young adulthood that becomes more philosophical to his 30s, where he finally considers spirituality and realizes that nothing in life is as significant as the Creator God.

                The movie, “The Most Reluctant Convert,” is a condensed version of that trajectory.

                Again surprisingly, the conversion in the title isn’t to belief in Christ. As Lewis says in the book, it’s an acceptance of deism. Any change in his beliefs had to be logical, and for him, it was a step-by-step process.

                Alone in his room at Oxford’s Magdalen College in his early 30s, Lewis “gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. …

                “It must be understood that the conversion … was only to Theism, pure and simple, not to Christianity.” Lewis believed in a God, but not a personal one and not in the form of Jesus Christ.

                He still was not sure that “I was now approaching the source from which those arrows of Joy had been shot at me ever since childhood. He did start attending his local parish church, “not because I believed in Christianity, … but because I thought one ought to ‘fly one’s flag’ by some unmistakable overt sign.”

                It was through more reflection and conversations with Tolkien and others that Lewis came closer to faith in Christ. “I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken,” he wrote. He was in the sidecar of his brother Warnie’s motorcycle on a sunny day as the brothers approached the zoo at the village of Whipsnade.

                “When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did,” Lewis wrote.

                He also decided that joy was important only as a signpost to Christ: “It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer.”

                As a world-famous author and scholarly professor, Lewis may not seem to be a model for us ordinary folks. But if you take time to read this book or see this movie, you might be surprised that we all face some of the same obstacles to understanding God.

Nov. 21, 2021, column in the Amarillo Globe-News: 

People in our pasts serve as 'stone' markers in our journeys

By Mike Haynes

                Two men I knew long ago passed away this year, and I found out about both on Facebook.

                Both were people I’m glad I encountered in the 1980s, and both had been mostly off my radar for the past three decades.

                I liked both a lot, and it would have been nice if I had contacted them occasionally through the years. But this isn’t a plea for getting in touch with friends or loved ones before it’s too late. I fully agree with that, and no one has expressed it better than Lance Lahnert, the former sports editor whose column about his late father ran in this newspaper annually for years.

                Making sure family and close friends know you love them is vital. And for me, keeping the ties to my McLean schoolmates and hometown friends is a given, made easier by an all-school reunion every two years.

                But what about people who were significant to you for a short time before you moved away? The deaths of Darrel and Ed reminded me that we should at least stop to be grateful for those we knew in the past.

                The book of Joshua in the Old Testament tells us that after the Israelites had crossed the Jordan River as God stopped its flow, the Lord told their leader, Joshua, to have men take 12 stones from the river to stack in the Promised Land as a memorial of the event.

                The primary purpose was for future generations to know about the power and love of God. It also was a reminder that the story of the Jordan crossing should be passed on.

                I see people in our pasts as markers in our journeys. Even if we don’t stay in touch, each time we think about them and the impact they had on us can be a “stone” that reminds us of good times and good people.

EDWIN HENRY

                Edwin Henry hired me as sports editor of a suburban newspaper in the Houston area around 1980. He was a helpful boss, having covered sports around the city for years. He gently tutored me in writing about baseball, which I liked but didn’t quite understand as well as other sports.

                He quickly became a friend, too, helping me move into my apartment and giving me advice on living single in a big city. I learned of his love of bass fishing and bowling and met some of his family and friends.

                George Foreman, who was between his boxing heyday and his later comeback – and before the George Foreman Grill – lived in a Houston suburb. Ed had connections and easily could have interviewed the sports legend by himself. But he invited me to go with him, and we spent an hour as Foreman sat on his couch next to bench press equipment in his living room. Ed wrote a feature on his boxing career, and I wrote one on his Christian faith.

                Ed was African-American, and he sometimes tactfully filled me in on cultural differences that he figured I wouldn’t know about as a white guy who grew up on a ranch in West Texas.

                In a couple of years I moved back closer to family, but Ed still was concerned about my future. When he and his wife visited Amarillo for a bowling tournament, my parents and I met them for supper. After that, though, we let the 600 miles between us take its toll. I’m not sure why I decided to Google him the other day and saw that he had died this year.

        

DARREL THOMAS

       Darrel Thomas was my colleague for seven years at Texas Tech. He was the photography adviser for Tech Student Publications, and I was the editorial adviser. We guided student staff members of the university’s newspaper and yearbook.

                Darrel was an instructor and friend to the hundreds of student photographers who passed through his office, studio and darkroom in the basement of the journalism building. He stayed in contact with many of them, and the scattered photogs got together with him often.

                Darrel was a Tech student and then a student publications/media professional for 44 years. He’s one of a few people who deserves the title, “Mr. Texas Tech,” or at least “Mr. Red Raider Photographer.” As fellow advisers, we sometimes disagreed – Darrel defending his photo students and me supporting the writers and editors. He was demanding about photo excellence but a fun friend to students and colleagues. He liked rock music and a good get-together.

Kathy and I did get Darrel to shoot our wedding photos in 1991. I may have seen him once after that.

He retired, but his camera was as active as ever. My recent interaction with him usually was saying “Nice photo!” about one of his online bird, cloud or moon pictures, to which he always, replied, “Thanks, Mike.”

                Darrel died Oct. 23, and his memorial service took place Nov. 9 in the Kent R. Hance Chapel on the Tech campus.

                Darrel and Ed left legacies with those who came their way. Last week, I saw an Associated Press photo credit naming one of Darrel’s students who became a veteran NFL photographer. On social media, Ed’s son said he’s honored to see stories about his father, and that  “It helps keep his memory alive.” 

                Maybe it isn’t realistic for us to stay close to all the people like Ed and Darrel who have touched our lives. But we can think about them now and then – a mental “stone” – and thank God that we knew 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.

 

Nov. 7, 2021, column in the Amarillo Globe-News:

Jesus: A better superhero than all the fake ones combined

By Mike Haynes

                Our niece, Sheri Ann, loves Halloween. She and her husband, Tyler, always dress up, decorate their house and especially, make it a fun time for their 4-year-old son, Dallas.

                From the video I saw of Dallas this year, it looked like his improvised costume was part Ninja Turtle, part Spiderman. And his confident body language showed that he considered himself some kind of superhero.

                Lots of superheroes show up on Oct. 31. Wonder Woman. Black Panther. When I was around Dallas’s age, I had a Superman outfit complete with the red cape, and I would jump off our 18-inch fireplace hearth knowing I wouldn’t really fly around the living room but giving it my best imitation.

                 We invent superheroes who have abilities we’d like to have. How many times has someone asked you, “Which would you rather have, the ability to fly or to be invisible?” 

                Superheroes also fulfill, at least in our fantasies, the need to be saved. We are Lois Lane falling from a building, but Superman catches us to save the day.

                We use the word to praise first responders, soldiers and others who put themselves on the line for our protection, but there are no superheroes in real life like those from the DC or Marvel universes. Except…

                Christianity offers us one. You know his name. And if what he says is true, he’s a better superhero than all the fake ones combined.

                We are told that by taking our sins upon himself when he died on the cross and then rising from the dead, Jesus Christ – God – saved us from the penalty of those sins. His message is that if we believe in him as divine, we will live with him in heaven for eternity. Things might not be so good on Earth, but there, he is preparing a place for us that is better than anything we can imagine.

                Christian author C.S. Lewis was aware that other religions have stories of gods dying and coming back to life. He knew that such accounts, including that of Jesus, sometimes are called “myths.” He also knew that although people tend to use the word “myth” to mean something that isn’t true, there is another meaning.

                Simply put, “myth” can mean a story that describes or explains a truth. In that sense, Lewis recalls in his essay, “Myth Became Fact,” the example of Balder, the son of the god Odin in Norse mythology. Balder dies and goes to the underworld and eventually, at the end of the world, he returns.  

                Lewis also mentions Osiris, an Egyptian king and god who was murdered but came back to life as ruler of the underworld. But the British author points out a key difference in those myths and that of Christ. While the others are hazy histories with no specific locations or times … well, Lewis explains it better than I can:

                “The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history.

“It happens – at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified … under Pontius Pilate.

“By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. …God is more than a god, not less: Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about ‘parallels’ and ‘Pagan Christs’: they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t.”

If someone tells me the Bible story is a myth, my answer will be, “Yes, it is.  A true myth.” It fulfills the wishes of humans who for thousands of years have invented superheroes to save them; and 2,000 years ago in a real place on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, the myth came true.

 Oct. 24, 2021, column:

'Imagine Heaven' strengthens faith

By Mike Haynes

                It’s not that I didn’t believe in heaven, just that the concept seemed too surreal and unlike the natural world that it was hard to imagine what it might be like, and it was difficult to visualize family, friends or myself in a place that no one in this world has seen.

                Our pastor did a fascinating series of sermons several years ago on heaven that I probably should revisit. Tommy Politz said that obviously, believers in Christ won’t be floating on clouds playing harps but that we would have houses to live in, satisfying work to do and plenty of time to drop in on friends for a cup of coffee.

                Now that I think of it, maybe we could even take harp lessons if we wanted to.

                I once wrote that I hoped heaven would include the chance to watch videotapes – this was a long time ago – of anything we wanted to see from the past. Maybe we’d be able to see the 1954 Cotton Bowl in color or the actual signing of the Declaration of Independence or, more important, Jesus being baptized.

                But my thoughts of heaven were almost fantasy-based, sort of wishful thinking.

                Now, because of a book and a series of Bible study lessons, I have a more concrete vision of heaven. And it has shed light on pretty much every bit of scripture that I come across.

                John Burke’s 2015 book, “Imagine Heaven,” relies heavily on near-death experiences – so many of them that he refers to them as NDEs – to provide accounts of short visits to heaven that are convincing and inspiring. And he supplements those stories with biblical references to heaven that fit surprisingly well with the NDEs.

                The book itself is enough to motivate serious consideration of life after death, but our Sunday school teacher, Kevin Hazelwood, brought it to life – or afterlife? – even more with his vivid descriptions from the book and his research of scripture passages that are corroborated by many NDEs.

                Kevin and I agreed that the book is convincing because of the sheer number of well-researched near-death incidents Burke describes. Writing about “Imagine Heaven,” materials science professor Dr. Walter Bradley said he appreciated the varied accounts from interviews “with people of very different ages, cultures, religious beliefs, and physical challenges (such as blindness) to find the common elements that emerge to give a vibrant picture of what life after death will likely entail.”

                Burke, pastor of Gateway Church in Austin, said he wrote as “a convinced Christian,” but he admitted that he had not always been convinced. And he said he purposely chose “stories from people with little to no profit motive: orthopedic surgeons, commercial airline pilots, professors, neurosurgeons – people who probably don’t need the money but have credibility to lose by making up wild tales.”

                Of course, the stories are from people who claim they visited heaven but didn’t stay. Airline Captain Dale Black and two other pilots were in the crash of a small plane in California. The other two men died, and it appeared that Black did, too. But he was revived, and he reported breathtaking sights.

                Black said he traveled through a path of light surrounded by darkness, escorted by two large, angelic beings dressed in white. He approached “a magnificent city, golden and gleaming among a myriad of resplendent colors. The light I saw was the purest I had ever seen. And the music was the most majestic, enchanting, and glorious I had ever heard. … I knew instantly that this place was entirely and utterly holy. …

                “The entire city was bathed in light … The light was palpable. It had substance to it, weight and thickness, like nothing I had ever seen before or since. … Somehow I knew that light and life and love were connected and interrelated. … Remarkably, the light didn’t shine on things but through them. Through the grass. Through the trees. Through the wall. And through the people who were gathered there. …”

                Black described “groupings of brightly colored picture-perfect homes in small, quaint towns … If music could become homes, it would look like these, beautifully built and perfectly balanced.”

                That’s just the beginning of accounts from scores of people who “died” and came back. The most common experience was an overwhelming feeling of love and forgiveness. Many experienced reviews, some with Jesus by their side, of good and bad things they had done in their lives. They said when faced with the sins they had committed, there was no condemnation – just as Paul promises in Romans 8:1.

                Teacher Kevin took from the book the concept that in heaven, our selfish human nature will be removed, leaving only love. “We will be who we were created to be,” he said. Another takeaway: We are not our body; we are spirit.

                He also listed statistics of commonalities in the book’s reports, including out-of-body separation, 75%; heightened sense of sound, sight, touch, smell, 75%; encountering mystical beings, family and friends, 57%; a life review, 22%.

                Many of the common reports came from people of diverse backgrounds such as Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and atheist. Some interacted telepathically with a man in white with sparkling, magnetic eyes. Christians thought he was Jesus.

                Some were given a choice to stay in this fantastic world or return to Earth. Others were told it wasn’t their time.

                The book reminded me of a recent story about Gary Bartel, a former Texas Tech football player, former West Texas A&M coach and Grand Prairie athletic director who was in a long coma with COVID-19 and finally recovered. After regaining consciousness, Bartel told Greg Riddle of The Dallas Morning News, “I was in a room with just a table and a couple of chairs, and a man walked in. The room was really bright, and the man sat down across from me and we talked about my family and my life. All of a sudden, he stood up and said, ‘It’s not your time,’ and he walked out of the room.

                “My whole perspective on life has really been changed. I’m just thankful for every day I get to get up and I’m breathing and my feet are on the floor and I get to stand up. You can’t live in fear. You’ve got to live in faith.”

                This book strengthened mine.

 * * *

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.

 Oct. 10, 2021, column:

Franklin Graham: Still a rebel with a cause

By Mike Haynes

                Franklin Graham says he still is a “Rebel With A Cause.”

                The son of Billy Graham – who is well known for his own preaching, humanitarian work and political views the past few decades but always will be associated with his famous father – spoke to an estimated 11,600 people in Amarillo’s John Stiff Memorial Park on a warm Sunday afternoon two weeks ago. It was the largest audience of his eight-city Route 66 God Loves You Tour that started Sept.  19 with 8,700 people attending in Joliet, Illinois, and ended Oct. 2 before 6,800 in San Bernardino, California. Total tour attendance was around 56,000.

           

     Preparation for the event spanned months and included 165 Texas Panhandle churches. Many members brought “unchurched” family and friends.

                Franklin Graham preached Sept. 26 from a small podium on a large stage filled with drums and other equipment of the tour’s musicians. Spread out in front of him were the thousands of local and area people, mostly sitting in lawn chairs, some with umbrellas to ward off the 86-degree sun.

                His message was a basic evangelistic appeal, with the story of “blind Bartimaeus” from Mark 10:46-52 his scriptural focus.

                Graham had told me he would touch on cultural issues and the state of the country, and touch on them is all he did, listing stealing, taking God’s name in vain, worshipping idols, lying, adultery, sex outside of marriage, murder and abortion as examples of sins that fall short of God’s standards.

                “Any type of sexual relationship outside a marriage relationship is a sin against God,” he said. “And let me tell you what a marriage relationship is: It’s a man and a woman. … That’s how God defines marriage. God made us male and female.”

                While calling abortion a sin, Graham continued, “In a crowd this size, there are a number of women who have had an abortion. … Will God forgive you for what you’ve done? I’m here to tell you that absolutely, he’ll forgive you.

                “But you’ve got to come to him with faith in Christ. The point is, all of us are guilty of breaking one or more or all of God’s laws. There is no one who can keep the laws of God. … God sent his son to save us, to save you, to save me. And all we have to do is be willing to accept it by faith. Wow. What a good God. What a great God that he loves us that much.”

                Although such viewpoints are merely the traditional beliefs the Christian church has held for 2,000 years, they make Graham a controversial figure in a world that increasingly embraces relativism with no moral absolutes. That’s why, at a short news conference before the event, I asked whether he still considers himself a “Rebel With A Cause.” That’s the title of his 1995 book that describes his rebellious youth and his eventual full acceptance of a calling to preach God’s Word.

                “Sure,” he answered with no hesitation. “What I mean by ‘rebel’ – I believe in telling the truth and standing up for what’s true. And I don’t care if it’s politically correct or not. I’m going to just say what I believe the Bible teaches, and it’s what I believe, and if it steps on people’s toes, I’m sorry.

“But this country of ours is in trouble. We’ve turned our back on God; the politicians want you to look to them to solve all your problems. They just make the problems worse. And it’d be better if the politicians just got out of the way and just let people like here in West Texas just do what they do, and things would be a lot better. Our country’s just in trouble morally, spiritually, economically, we’re in trouble.”

Despite Graham airing those convictions, the overwhelming spotlight of the day was on the words “love” and “hope.” The evangelist from North Carolina pointed out the faith of Bartimaeus that resulted in Jesus giving him sight. “There was no hope for a blind guy,” he said. “All he could do was sit on the side of the road and beg.

“Being a good person has nothing to do with salvation. It’s accepting the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross. “It’s not by works, but by faith. And Bartimaeus cried out in faith.”

Christian band Newsboys, led by Michael Tait, echoed the message with songs such as “He Reigns,” as did Marcos Witt, who sang in English and Spanish, and longtime Graham musical colleague Dennis Agajanian.

A chapter in “Rebel With A Cause” recalls the first meeting of Agajanian and Franklin Graham – on the Texas Tech University campus during the 1975 Billy Graham crusade in Lubbock.

At the Sept. 26 event, Agajanian skillfully picked his guitar and sang old hymns such as “Nothing But the Blood.” And he pleased the crowd with “Amarillo By Morning.”

Wearing a wide-brimmed hat reminiscent of the Grand Ole Opry or Woodstock, Agajanian said, “Jesus Christ is a greater savior than you are a sinner. He loves you, man.”

After Graham’s message, locally trained counselors met throughout the park with those who stood up in response, giving them a guidebook for the next steps of Christian faith.

Franklin Graham headed to Alaska after the tour to greet a new group of wounded veterans attending one of the retreats his organization provides each summer. I suspect he planned to repeat something he said in Amarillo:

“Let’s live the life God has called us to live. Let’s do it forgiven, cleansed, knowing we’re on our way to heaven.”

Sept. 26, 2021, column:

Graham to make Route 66 God Loves You Tour stop in Amarillo

By Mike Haynes

                Organizers of the Franklin Graham Route 66 God Loves You Tour had expected 4,000 to 5,000 people to attend last Sunday’s first stop of the two-week evangelistic effort in Joliet, Illinois. In Graham’s first large public speaking engagement in 18 months, some worried that the continuing pandemic might keep people away.

                Apparently the offer of God’s hope was a strong lure. According to the ministry and WJOL radio, more than 8,700 showed up to hear Graham and some well-known musicians proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. Most brought lawn chairs to sit in 90-degree heat on the asphalt parking lot of Chicagoland Speedway.

                Amarillo and Texas Panhandle residents are invited to the fifth stop on the tour at 4 p.m. today at John Stiff Memorial Park near 45^th Avenue and Bell Street in Amarillo. The temperature was expected to approach 90 here, too, but the park will provide grass instead of hot asphalt. Those attending are encouraged to bring chairs or blankets.

                 Knowing the parking congestion around the park during past Fourth of July fireworks events, I suggest getting there early. Even though it’s been 21 years, this son of Billy Graham, preaching the Christian message, drew big audiences for three nights to the Texas Panhandle Festival 2000 at Dick Bivins Stadium.

                Graham said in a July telephone interview from Alaska that Amarillo and the other locations were chosen for the 2021 tour because Billy Graham Evangelistic Association leaders thought these cities would be receptive.

                “Of course, we’ve been in Amarillo before, and we have contacts with the churches. So we felt that we had a good base to work with there,” he said. Graham said he’s aware the nation isn’t out of the woods yet regarding COVID, and in Illinois a week ago, he addressed the issue.

                “Many people are afraid. Many people are scared,” he said from the outdoor stage. “Many people don’t know what to do.

“Twenty years ago, 9/11 changed the world. In 2020, the pandemic changed the world.” But the ultimate answer, he said, is in the title of the tour.

“I’m here to tell you, ‘God loves you,’” he said.

Members of local churches have taken a Christian Life and Witness course in order to be counselors at today’s event, and they hope area church members will invite neighbors and friends to attend. A friend in Florida told me he hopes it won’t be just a rally of Christians but a time of change for people who haven’t given their lives to God.

That kind of effect was seen in Joliet, where the BGEA reported that “hundreds” made decisions for Christ in person and “hundreds more” did so through online and text responses in both English and Spanish. Plans are for all the tour stops to be streamed at https://godlovesyoutour.com/live.

After Joliet, the God Loves You Tour was to stop at St. Louis on Tuesday, Springfield, Missouri, on Thursday and Oklahoma City on Saturday before driving down I-40 for today’s Amarillo event. The tour will continue at Albuquerque next Tuesday and Flagstaff, Arizona, on Thursday before concluding Saturday at San Bernardino, California.

Graham is joined on the tour by Newsboys, who have had 33 No. 1 Christian radio hits; Marcos Witt, a Hispanic singer and pastor; and Dennis Agajanian, a longtime performer at BGEA events.

Graham said the event’s purpose absolutely is the basic evangelistic message of the Bible but that he also can’t ignore the current state of the nation and slide of our culture away from biblical values. He recalled recent conversations with former Vice President Mike Pence about the political and cultural crossroads that face America.

 Graham and Pence were in Alaska in July supporting Operation Heal Our Patriots, a ministry of Samaritan’s Purse, which Graham heads along with leading the BGEA. The ministry offers guidance, marriage counseling and recreation to wounded veterans and their spouses.

“Every week we have couples that get saved,” Graham said from Alaska. “We baptize them right here, and the water’s cold; it’s like liquid ice. And so you get baptized here, they mean it; it’s the real deal.”

Jim McKee, a Bible teacher at Hillside Christian Church in Amarillo, believes now is a perfect time for Graham to bring Christ’s message to Amarillo and all along Route 66.

“Franklin Graham communicates so well how man has departed from the path of God,” McKee said. “But he tells us how to find the love and grace of Jesus and return to God’s straight way. He speaks scripture so clearly, showing God’s moral absolutes, but also God’s love to all who believe in his son Jesus.”

As Graham said on the phone, he and I have a little more gray hair than we did during his Amarillo festival in 2000. But with multiple ministries, he’s as active as ever. He’ll be at the park today.

So will I.

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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.