The Kiss of an Old Godly Man

One of my heroes, L. E. Maxwell, died in February 1984 at age 88.

Mr. Maxwell was President and Principal of Prairie Bible Institute (PBI), a school on the prairies of Alberta, Canada. PBI, through the grace of God, trained and sent out several thousand missionaries, pastors, Christian workers, and others throughout the world.

I graduated in 1966 from PBI and my wife, Margaret, graduated the following year. We both benefited greatly from our years at PBI and honored and loved Mr. Maxwell for his example of dedication and sacrificial service to the Lord and his love for the Word of God. He also truly loved PBI’s students. He sought to train them in a disciplined lifestyle for God’s glory with a thorough knowledge of the Word of God.

Mr. Maxwell suffered from Parkinson’s disease and other ailments during the last years of his life. He became bedridden and required around-the-clock care. Individuals volunteered to take turns sitting with Mr. Maxwell and caring for him during the night so his wife, Pearl, could sleep after she had cared for her husband all day long.

During one furlough from the Philippines, I spoke at a conference at PBI. I heard that a dear friend, Robert Sinclair, in his late 70’s at that time, was one of the individuals who cared for Mr. Maxwell in the late night and early morning hours. He usually took a shift from 10 p.m. until about 4 or 5 a.m.

The family granted me permission to visit Mr. Maxwell during one of Robert Sinclair’s night shifts. One evening around midnight, I sat with Mr. Maxwell for over one hour. He reclined in a large chair and was unable to speak. I moved closer to him, and with our knees touching and his strong hands in mine, I simply expressed my appreciation to him and gave an update about many former students of Prairie who were now serving with ACTION and other missions in the Philippines. As I shared story after story of how God was using them and the impact that Mr. Maxwell and Prairie had made in their lives, tears ran down his cheeks.

When Mr. Sinclair informed me that it was time to put Mr. Maxwell to bed, I asked if I could do this. He instructed me on how to bend over so Mr. Maxwell could put his arms around my neck. I then put my arms around his frail body, picked him up as though giving him a bear hug, and carried him to his bed in a small bedroom.

As I lay him down, my face was close to his. Before releasing his arms from my neck, he gave me a kiss on the cheek!

I have been with many well known and famous people throughout the years in various venues of service and ministry, but have never been so honored as to have had the opportunity to actually carry and assist this dear saint of God.

One of the verses Mr. Maxwell used to quote quite often was Hosea 6:3, "So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD..." (nasb).

It is because of the example and teaching of men like Mr. Maxwell that we can press on to know the wonderful Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ!

Leaders to Pray

Spiritual leaders should be men and women of prayer (James 5:16-18). Relying on our own strength to accomplish things is worldliness. True spirituality is constant dependence on God for everything, from the mundane to the earth-shaking (Philippians 4:6-7). When confronted with a crisis or a crucial decision, the spiritual leader’s first impulse would be to breathe a prayer to God. He would then spend an extended time of prayer as well as call on others for prayer. He, whose first impulse when confronted with a crisis is to immediately call a meeting in order to discuss the matter, is a worldly leader.

--William B. Girao

What Works in Ministry to Children

A lot of ministry to kids amounts to little more than child care and entertainment. This alone does not fulfill God’s heart for kids. What will help us really reach kids and disciple them?

Over the past several years, we have asked mission leaders, pastors and teachers to tell us about the most effective evangelism and outreach programs working in their regions. This has not been a formal study. However, we heard many common themes, emphasized over and over again.

Top ten most effective programs for reaching kids
1. Families
2. Mercy ministry (ongoing compassion in action)
3. Christian mission schools
4. Vibrant, relevant Sunday school or children’s church
5. Friends
6. Bible camps
7. Other club programs
8. Vacation Bible schools or other crusade-type events
9. Sports camps, programs
10. Vacation Bible schools or other crusade-type events

Look back over the list. Do you notice what is missing? We have not included curriculum, children’s tracts, children’s Bibles, videos, coloring books, or other literature. Why? Because children do not come to Christ as a result of a piece of paper, unless it come attached to a human being. Children (and adults, too) are reached through relationships.

In many developing regions of the world where we train children’s leaders, people request materials. They want curriculum and teaching supplies. We understand the desire. But we feel obligated to tell them about the great North American curriculum experiment. For the past 50 years, we have watched more and more curriculum become available to Christian teachers for Sunday School and other children’s programs. Most teachers have ample access to well-written curriculum. What is the result?

Researchers report that two-thirds of our students are leaving the church after high school. Our children struggle to describe their beliefs. Have they grown as disciples? Unfortunately, no.

One lesson we have learned: it’s about relationships. [Pages 180, 181]

Source: Sylvia Foth, Daddy Are We There Yet? (A global check-in on the world of mission and kids), Kidzana Ministries, Mukilteo, 2009

Are Ten Lickins' Enough?

(edited by P.Callaway & Kim Craig)

When I was growing up in the 1940s, a spanking was called a “lickin,” and a swat was called a “lick.” Few people seem to know much about this anymore, so I was particularly intrigued by the excellent movie Places in the Heart. 

The movie deals with love, sacrifice, determination, and racial prejudice. In one scene, a young widow is faced with the need to spank her son. The mother asks the 11-year-old how his daddy had spanked him before. The little boy obediently says, “Mom, I bent over the table and he would spank me with his belt.”

Distraught, the mother asks, “Would he hit you hard or softly?”

“What I did was pretty bad, Mom, so he would probably spank me hard,” the boy responds.

“How many licks would he give you?” asks the mother.

“Well, Mom,” The boy replies, “Dad would be pretty mad so he would probably give me ten.”

So the mother proceeds to give him ten swats. Through tears, she later says, “I will never spank my son again.”

It was a very moving scene, but I laughed at the difference between the mother portrayed in the movie and my own mother. My mom would have said, “If you do it again, I will give you twenty!”

Mom and Granddad, who helped raise me, believed in lickins. Boy, did they ever!

On one occasion I received two spankings. I had thrown a rock through the window of a moving car and my grandfather almost wore out his thick brown belt on my backside! When my mother got home from work, she did not think he had beaten me enough, so she went at me with a black plastic belt. I may have had welts on my legs from these two hard spankings, but I did not throw rocks at cars anymore.

When I was about six or seven, someone was selling fruit on the side of the road. It looked to me like they were making quite a bit of money, so I proceeded to open a fruit and vegetable stand myself. One thing was missing: product. We had no garden, so I stole the fruits and vegetables from the neighbor’s backyard. It was a profitable little venture.

Until my grandfather found out.

He thought it was so funny and was laughing so hard that he could barely hold the belt to spank me. When Mom got home, she laughed in her room for a while, then got in a few good licks as well. I had to pay the neighbor back, of course, but I don’t think that was enough. From then on, I noticed that whenever I passed his house, he watched me very closely.

Growing up, I think my middle name was “lickin.”

The Word of God says there is a very important place for discipline. “Discipline your son while there is hope, and do not desire his death,” we are told in Proverbs 19:18. And again in Proverbs 22:15, “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline will remove it far from him.”

In the New Testament we read of God’s discipline of us, His children:

My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives…it is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness (Heb. 12:5-11, nasb).

Yes, God disciplines His children, but He has a purpose for doing so: It is for our good. How can this be? That we might share His holiness, His righteousness.

There is, however, a difference in the way we discipline our children and the way God disciplines us His children. As earthly parents, we make mistakes. We give five swats when we should have given ten or when we should have taken them for ice cream and had a meaningful talk.

But when God uses whatever means of discipline He wants to use, He knows exactly how much to give, what pressure to use, and in what situation. He spanks exactly right; not too hard and not too soft, but only that which accomplishes His purpose for His glory.

I knew my mom and grandfather loved me because of their care and—yes—even because of their lickins. If, like me, you have experienced God’s hand of discipline, remember the fruit it will bring. His love is felt daily as He cares and reproves us for our sake and especially for His glory.

What Do The Numbers Say About The Information Explosion?

There are currently 6.4 million books published about Christianity. Christians have produced 4.8 billion Bibles over the years, with 1.6 billion currently available on the planet. [“Table C,” IBMR, p. 30, line 58.] Non-Christian countries have 227 million Bibles in place in their midst, more than needed to serve all Christians there. However, they are poorly distributed, so many still do not have access to a Bible. [Johnson, “World Christian Trends 2005.”] Wycliffe also reports that the Bible still has not been translated into 3000 languages around our world. [Page 174]

Source: Sylvia Foth, Daddy Are We There Yet? (A global check-in on the world of mission and kids), Kidzana Ministries, Mukilteo, 2009

The "P" World: People

Let’s consider a different view of the task. What if we wanted to reach all the unreached kids of the world, about 1.4 billion children under 15? What if every church in North America challenged itself to reach and disciple (please do not skip this word) 100 totally unreached kids around the world each year through its mission ministries and teams? About 300,000 congregations (even if some do not have a current interest in mission) times 100 kids equals…30 million kids! Some churches might do more. Some might do less.

Even if this dream were possible, it would barely move us forward. Why? Because, right now, more than 88 million kids are born each year into families that do not know Jesus. So we’d still be falling behind, just with annual biological growth. We will barely have begun to reach the 1.4 billion unreached children who are already waiting to know Christ, much less reach the new ones. [Page 102]

Source: Sylvia Foth, Daddy Are We There Yet? (A global check-in on the world of mission and kids), Kidzana Ministries, Mukilteo, 2009

Poverty

More than one billion people in the world live on less than one dollar a day. In total, 2.7 billion struggle to survive on less than two dollars a day. [“Fast Facts: Faces of Poverty,” UN Millennium Project 2006, www.unmilenniumproject.org.] In these poverty-challenged areas, the population of children is often close to 50%. Many face extreme poverty, where there is not enough food to eat, clothing to wear, and no secure housing. [Page 90]

Source: Sylvia Foth, Daddy Are We There Yet? (A global check-in on the world of mission and kids), Kidzana Ministries, Mukilteo, 2009