Recently I spent three days in Boca Raton, Florida, at the Layman’s Leadership Institute. It was a thrilling experience to watch laymen who are at work for Christ as well as in business. Particularly gratifying to me was the participation of several members of the Board of Directors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Howard Butt, Jr., groceryman and lay evangelist, is the founder of the institute and its sparkplug. He and his fellow workers put together a challenging program for the hundreds of lay people who came from nearly every state east of the Mississippi and some west of it to attend the Leadership Institute.
J. Howard Pew, Presbyterian layman and chairman of the Sun Oil Company, delivered an address that was roundly applauded by his hearers as they rose to their feet at its conclusion. Speaking from the perspective of eighty-seven years, he showed how the churches have been infiltrated by humanism.
W. Maxey Jarman, retired chief executive of the Genesco Company, led two provocative seminars. Mr. Jarman has long been interested in the need for Christians in politics and is seeking his party’s nomination for governor of the State of Tennessee. If he wins the nomination and the election, Tennessee will have a fine Christian leader.
