With Chris H’s hand-carved “Christians” sign swinging from our awning, we began to reach out to hippies in the Madison area. We furnished the two upstairs bedrooms with bunk-beds, one room for males, the other for Priscilla and any other females who joined us.
Barry, my ZBT and tripping partner made it his goal to drag as many street people has he could find. These were people who certainly needed God, but were beyond our capabilities to help them. Most were just “townies” (Madison residents), not university students or hippies. It seemed that Barry tapped into a group of high school truants who were immersed in the non-hallucinogenic drug culture. They were speed-freaks and heroin addicts. We had no idea how to help these people.
We were reaching out to those in the psychedelic culture whom we believed were searching for “truth.” Barry’s kids were just looking for “highs.” These street kids were distractions in our study and prayer times, ate through more than their share of our communal food, came and went at all hours of the night, slept all day, refused to share in chores, etc.
Things came to a head very quickly. When we discovered that our basement was being used by these kids for sexual adventures, we explained to Barry that this had to stop. If people were going to accept our hospitality, then they had to live by our rules.
Just as we had that settled, I got a visit from some Madison detectives. They told me that we needed to bar these kids from overnight stays. First of all, they were underage truants and secondly, they were participating in the heroin trade. That was all we needed!
When we tried to talk this out with Barry, he reacted angrily and left, taking his high school gang with him. I suppose this was to be expected that he would not understand our ministry. After all, he had never really been in sympathy with us as Jesus freaks. In our zeal to help Barry and win him to Jesus, Chris A. and I had manipulated him into to a confession of faith.
One of my early lessons was this—now matter how much you desire to help someone, they have to make their own choices. And, not everyone is ready for truth when you believe they are. They have to be "ready" for the truth before they can hear it.
With the high school druggies gone, we got back to our mission of reaching the hippie community. About that time, there were antiwar protests happening all across the campus community. I had been a willing participant in these protests during my student years after having been tear-gassed on my way to a class as a freshman (67-68).
But since those “simpler” days, protests had turned violent. Just the previous summer, four radical activists had bombed Sterling Hall which housed the Army Math Research Center, killing Robert Fassnacht, a 33 year old post-doctoral researcher.
As protests began anew in early 1971, roving cars of deputies would dispense teargas into any groups of three or more whom they thought might be beginning a protest or violent activity. Our house was at the intersection of two of the primary streets in the Mifflin Street community of hippies. We became concerned as groups began to huddle on the sidewalk in front of us. The two Chris’s and I took turns walking outside to ask the groups to move along. We didn’t want the “Christian House” to be associated with political activity, especially since we knew we were being watched ever since the incident with Barry’s kids.
One group refused to move along initially. It turned out that they were members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a radical political organization that advocated the overthrow of the American government and was not opposed to violent means. It took both Chris’s and me to convince them to move along.
[I can be intimidating looking when I need to be, although I have never ever been in a fight. But, at 6’2 and with my dark beard, if I don’t smile . . . well, you get the idea. And Chris A., who would later become a Marine Corps officer, had been a wrestler in high school. He had spring loaded muscles and could frighten you with his frown.]
The SDS headquarters was in a house just a block away. I had to pass by it on my daily trips to the Mifflin Coop. A few days after the current protests subsided, I was accosted by the local leader of the SDS, Paul Soglin. He strongly suggested that we “Christians” leave the area. He threatened us with physical violence if we didn’t comply with this demand. But, I wasn’t smart enough to recognize the seriousness of this threat at the time.
[Interestingly, years later, Soglin became mayor of Madison. Apparently, he still has some coercive tendencies reflected in a 2009 comment suggesting that bicyclists who venture into snowstorms should be shot! http://forum.velonews.com/read.php?f=2&i=257179&t=257179, March, 2009.]
We must have been making some sort of an impact in the community if we were drawing attention from student political activists. Of course, our solution for change was personal rather political. Rather than overthrowing the establishment, we proclaimed the overthrow of “self” and giving over your life to Jesus as Lord and savior.
I was finding that our bible studies at the Christian House and the Sunday studies at Middleton Baptist Church hosted by a Dallas Seminary graduate only wetted my appetite for more study. The more I learned, the more I had to know. I guess this has always been part of what makes me tick. A superficial knowledge never suffices. I have to dig in and understand in depth.
I “wonder” about everything. Every “fact” demands a series of probing questions. And every probe unearths more facts that must be explored. Priscilla and Chris A. felt the same way. The three of us turned to the only source of in-depth bible study that we had—Col RB Thieme, Jr. from Berachah Church in Houston and his biblical studies on tape.
We would listen to tapes of bible studies from morning until late at night. We only took breaks to eat, sleep and attend other bible studies. We lost all interest in every day life. We were totally immersed in a search for understanding through the Bible. Now, Thieme’s tapes were not our only source. We also had studies by Dr. S. Louis Johnson and Dr. Howard Hendricks of Dallas Seminary, as well as a smattering of books and tapes from other popular evangelical teachers. But, only Thieme produced materials in enough quantity (thousands of hours) and at a cost that we could afford (they were free), to satisfy our hunger.
We made contact with a family in Green Lake, Wisconsin that had been studying with Thieme for years. He was an engineer and had taken early retirement from his job in Milwaukee. He owned a large house on the banks of Green Lake. From there, he and his family organized their entire lives around bible studies from Thieme. Rather than attending a local church, he gathered 10-15 “tapers” in his home on Sundays to listen to tapes together. This appealed to me as a Jesus freak. I just had no use for churches either. I had already subscribed to Thieme’s distorted position that the only purpose of the local church was to teach what he called “Bible Doctrine.”
A few weeks after meeting this Green Lake family, Priscilla and I decided that we should travel to Houston and get our teaching from Thieme firsthand. This had first been suggested to us by the family in Green Lake. Chris A. followed our example a few months later as did a couple of others in our circle. One of those who came to Houston later would later become Chris A’s wife.
Leaving the Christian House in the hands of the two Chris’s, Priscilla and I loaded our few worldly possession into to her little Renault and made our way to Houston.
Next: Houston, We Have a Problem!
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