The Heart of Worship

I thoroughly enjoyed the April issue’s emphasis on praise and worship and its true meaning. I was raised with praise and worship led by choir, piano and organ. It was a traumatic experience getting used to guitars and drums. Once during a service, the Lord reminded me that man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. It taught me that if the leaders playing guitar had a true intention of honoring God, then it was good enough for Him.

Tom Balkcom, Phoenix

 

Turn It Down, Please

Your April issue on worship does not mention that we have slipped into a culture of loud! Church leaders seem to justify 95 to 115 decibels. Often you can’t even hear yourself sing. My Bible says, “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.” I think this means from the heart. I’m not suggesting that musicians are insincere, but many have become victims of the culture. We all know how precious it is when they tone it down and the sweet presence of the Holy Spirit floods the place.

Dick Schnitker, Frisco, Texas

All Trials From God?

I love Lee Grady’s passion and read “Fire in My Bones” regularly. He writes, “God sends trials to mold our character, crush our pride and break our hard, outward shell so the Holy Spirit can flow through us to touch others” (April). However, if we think and preach that God afflicts us to make us better Christians, then our concept of the cross is too small, the Holy Spirit too abstract and reactive, and our God is not living in us as His tabernacle. 

El McMeen, Sparta, N.J.

 

Don’t Promote The Haters

In “At a Loss for the Word” (April), Troy Anderson recommends seven books that every Bible student needs—two of which are by John MacArthur. Why is a charismatic magazine promoting the writings of one of the leading proponents of the error that the gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit aren’t for today? When Charisma lifts up MacArthur as an appropriate source for Bible instruction, after he’s been a hinderance to many receiving the fullness of the Holy Spirit for years, I’ll think long and hard when the next renewal request arrives. 

Al LePage, Plymouth, Mich. read more

10:46AM EDT 6/2/2011

Remember the kid in elementary school who was teased for reading too much? You know, the girl with thick glasses who didn’t care if she was picked last for kickball because she was too engrossed in a new book. She’d sit alone at recess, lost in a vivid world that came alive in her imagination with every page turned.

Fast-forward 30 years, and it’s funny how the tables can turn on “bookworms” like her. They’re typically the ones now leading corporate boardrooms, arguing federal court cases and pioneering new technologies. Finance expert Dave Ramsey says a common thread among the world’s most financially successful people is their discipline of reading a book almost every week.

I’m not into measuring success by your salary or your profession. Nor am I saying all kids with insatiable appetites for reading end up geniuses. But it’s undeniable that books are powerful, positive life-shapers. In a day when dozens of other media offer more instant gratification, and in an era in which the digital tsunami has drastically altered our cultural landscape and intelligence—for better or worse—books still matter. 

Why must I state what’s been a given for hundreds of years? Because when you can carry entire libraries in your pocket (God bless smartphones), you begin to take for granted the power of a single book. That’s exactly what’s happening today, and sadly, we are forgetting that, amid the onslaught of “access anything, anywhere, anytime” information, books can still change things as nothing else can.

There are countless examples of this, but I can’t think of one better suited to highlight in the context of this magazine than David Wilkerson’s The Cross and the Switchblade. In late April, the Christian world mourned the sudden loss of this spiritual giant (whom we pay tribute to in this issue), yet his legacy will remain through his written words. Wilkerson’s powerful 1963 account of how he risked everything to show God’s love to gang members in New York City (particularly in Brooklyn and the Bronx) has affected millions around the world—and is still as riveting today as it was back then. Sure, reading habits may have changed since Wilkerson penned his first book, but the spiritual value contained on those printed pages has not. 

I was reminded of this when I visited Bethel Church in Redding, Calif., to write this month’s cover story and saw firsthand what a “revival culture” looks like after 15 years of passionately pursuing God’s presence as a community of believers. Bethel isn’t just a revival culture, it’s a reading culture too. Everywhere I went, people were talking about books by Bethel leaders. Why? Because those books carry the DNA of the church, which in turn, is the very DNA of the Holy Spirit moving there.

We’ve highlighted those and other books throughout this issue not as a generic reminder for you to read more. Instead, I hope they whet your appetite to open their pages and—as only books can do—have your life changed. read more

1:00AM EDT 6/1/2011

How the unabashed New York evangelist changed countless lives—including mine

It was early evening on April 27 when a phone call let me know the devastating news: David Wilkerson had been killed in a car accident. Dr. George Wood, general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, had just learned the news and felt I would want to report it. Knowing how important this was, we had a story online within 40 minutes. Our website’s traffic was so great, the site temporarily crashed, and the article had more forwards on Twitter and Facebook than any in Charisma News history.

That’s because David Wilkerson was one of the great Christian leaders of our generation, and his passing is a loss to the global church. He was the model of integrity, and he finished strong in a day when some televangelists are photographed in foreign countries with women they aren’t married to and others are exposed for secret gay activity while publicly opposing the gay agenda. Wilkerson was the paragon of virtue, and his influence was tremendous.

We covered him many times in Charisma—twice on the cover. Wilkerson was best remembered for his book The Cross and the Switchblade and for founding Teen Challenge, which now has centers around the world that help men and women overcome life-altering addictions. In 1987, Wilkerson founded Times Square Church, which has had a great impact in New York City.

What hasn’t been highlighted as often until now is how Wilkerson influenced others in ways he probably never knew. For example, the young Roman Catholics at Duquesne University who received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, which sparked the Catholic charismatic renewal, had read The Cross and the Switchblade, as well as They Speak With Other Tongues by John Sherrill, who co-authored Wilkerson’s book with his wife, Elizabeth.

There is a chapter in The Cross and the Switchblade in which Wilkerson tells a Catholic priest that the former drug addicts who received the baptism in the Holy Spirit had more power to live for God. In the book he described what the Bible says in Acts about the Holy Spirit. My longtime friend Bert Ghezzi told me that those books certainly made the students (which included him) more open to the Spirit in those fateful days in early 1967. 

It seems nearly every Christian leader from that era has a David Wilkerson story. Dr. Wood remembers that at the time Wilkerson’s dad was pastor of the Assemblies of God church in Turtle Creek, Pa., his own father pastored 30 members at the Assemblies church in nearby Pitcairn, Pa. A young, enthusiastic David Wilkerson wanted to preach in Pitcairn, but Dr. Wood’s father wasn’t sure David was ready and didn’t let him.

John Sherrill remembers that when The Cross and the Switchblade was translated in many languages, sales took off except in one Scandinavian country. Wilkerson suspected the translation was bad, so he had someone read it and discovered the translator had stripped out all references to the power of the Holy Spirit due to a personal theological bias. He insisted the book be republished with the material on the Holy Spirit reinserted. The sales after that took off.

I also was impacted by Wilkerson. I read his book as a teenager, and his description of drug addiction scared me so much I never experimented with drugs, even though it was the norm among many in my generation. I had the privilege of interacting with Wilkerson many times over the years and have my own story about him.

In February 1972, as a junior at the University of Florida, I found out Wilkerson was speaking at a youth rally in Lakeland, Fla. I drove 120 miles from Gainesville with two friends to attend. It was that weekend I met a beautiful woman named Joy, who today is my business partner, my wife and my best friend.

Years later when I took a picture (shown here) with Wilkerson at his church office in New York, I was able to tell him about his influence on my life and career—because without Joy, there would never have been a Charisma magazine.

I, along with millions of others around the world, thank God for the life and influence of David Wilkerson.

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Steve Strang is the founder and publisher of Charisma. Follow him on Twitter at @sstrang.To read more of his and others’ reflections on David Wilkerson, plus videos, photos and articles by the New York evangelist, go to wilkerson.charismamag.com.

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1:00AM EDT 6/1/2011