Can a Kansas farmer grow a California church? Lyle Steenis did. Back in 1948, he plotted his field, broke up the ground, sowed, watered, and finally reaped. Folks back home told the tale of how he saw a cloud formation in a clear Kansas sky that spelled P.c. They thought the sign meant PLOW Corn. Lyle said it meant PREACH Christ.
So Lyle diligently followed what he discerned as the Lord’s direction. He moved to Redondo Beach, when it was all sand dunes and fields, and built a little church with his own hands. He and his wife made their home the church nursery while they struggled to grow a congregation. He prayed for souls and for revival.
It seemed the Lord had answered his prayers, and in a neat and tidy way, too. By 1969, Brother Steenis was pastor to about three hundred middle-class, middle-aged family folks. There was spiritual growth and numerical growth. God was at work in their lives.
Then something messy happened. It was chaotic. It was unorthodox. It was revival.
Some kids from the Love Generation found Brother Steenis and Jesus, in that order, and knew they had found real love. They brought their friends, and soon the services overflowed with barefoot, long-haired types wearing love beads and placing their drugs and rock-and-roll albums on the altar for Jesus. They came half-dressed, and some of the newer ones still smoked cigarettes out in the parking lot.
Then they wanted to pray till all hours of the night. They moved in together for fellowship till their homes looked like communes. Just what was this, anyway—a hippie church, a cult?
Soon, most of the tithe-paying families began leaving, with words of doom delivered at the back door.
Brother Steenis was still an old Kansas farmer and didn’t know much about cultural relevance. But he knew how to hang on to God when all heaven broke loose. He didn’t try to understand the revival or control it. He went on preaching the Word of God. Before services, he could be found in the prayer room, on his knees, holding hands with his wife, Doris. The young people didn’t know he was hanging on for dear life.
Why did God have to be so strange? Why wasn’t everything being done decently and in order? What he’d had before—now that looked like church. Lyle had been looking forward to his church growing and his denomination inviting him to be the featured speaker at the next convocation. What he had now was bringing the denominational authorities for a skeptical look-see. Established Christians came, not to help but to “discern the spirits.”
Brother Steenis’s little church ended up hosting from fifty to one hundred “seekers” each service. They held church almost every day of the week. Look, Life, and Time magazines all featured this little church with the non-seeker-friendly name, Bethel Tabernacle, in their articles about the Jesus Movement.
Over the clamor of confusion, Brother Steenis could hear the angels rejoicing—not in solos, not in quartets, but in choirs. He used to say, “My only compensation in the ministry is souls.” He was well-compensated.
He watched over his untidy, immature flock for three years until one day the small plane he was flying went down and he went up. After that, the fledgling believers had to grow up fast. Many went on to become ministers and Christian workers, like I did, and the man I married.
Still, after two decades of ministry, all I know about revival is that it seldom looks neat and tidy. And the only compensation for a life in ministry is souls.
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Linda Riley is director of Called Together Ministries in Torrance, California. In this column, she reflects on the variety of people we meet in ministry.
1996 Christianity Today/LEADERSHIP JournalSpring 1996, Vol. 17, No. 2, Page 93
