Our Life Together Vol. 4 Nr. 26 July 6, 1976

The Cover art prepares us for the cover story inside where Ken Pagaard presents an article entitled Mystery.

Ken starts his article by quoting 1 Timothy 3:16 "Great is the mystery. . ." He then discusses how much we, particularly in the western traditions want to explain everything about God. Fundamentalists seem to know all of the answers, Theologians set up systems and cults are born through the effort to supply all of the answers. Ken is becoming comfortable with not having all of the answers. He is also comfortable with profound doctrines such as the trinity and the incarnation even though he doesn't understand them fully.

He continues to discuss the atonement and free will. He then discusses the mystery of communion and states that maybe we were never meant to really understand this mystery.

Of course this page also has another McFoone strip. McFoone searches for God -- but it is God who finds him.

Ken completes the article by suggesting that we embrace the Great Mystery which is in Jesus Christ.

Next, he begins to discuss the American Baptist Charismatic Fellowship. He traces the early years up through the beginnings of the conference at Green Lake, WI. Of course this fellowship continues as Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries. Clay Ford is the current Chairman of the Fellowship. I continue as an adhoc member of the Executive Committee.

The Fellowship was never meant to be a tight-knit organization, yet we found that it was too loosely organized in the early 1980s. We are now better organized than we were then, but the philosophy is still very similar to the early picture that we see on this page.


We also see that, in these early days, Our Life Together was the official paper of the Fellowship. Of course this is no longer true. HSRM has its own publication "Refreshing Times."

This page continues with information about articles that would be included in OLT in the future. Not much of this actually happened. I found out later, it is very difficult to solicit good articles from busy people across the nation. But, some of this did occur. Then there is a report on the conference at Green Lake. I found this to be very interesting. The number of 300 is smaller than our current conferences, but that is still a large number for a conference at Green Lake. I notice that the Southern Baptist speaker, Roy Lamberth, was a speaker at the Baptist meetings the following year in Kansas City.

On this page, Ken continues to discuss the conference. He discusses the teaching by Howard Ervin. How I miss this man. He was a great Bible teacher. In the early 80s when I was struggling, he took me under his wing. I miss him. 

Larry Clark provides us with Quotable Quotes by Stephanie Mahan (Harris) and Joe Atkinson. Joe is still active -- he is a permanent member of HSRM Executive Committee.

This page wraps up the report on ABCF. Coming events are announced. We did follow through on these "Weeks of Renewal." They were great opportunities for those of us in the church to get to know pastors from all over the country.

Finally there is an article by Frauke Kuo. She was a young woman who used to visit us at Westby house quite often. In this article, she is struggling with the fact that her husband has cancer. I'm not sure when, but he did die of this cancer.

This page starts with the conclusion of Frauke's psalm.

The next little article describes a visit to the First Baptist Church of Littleton CO, by the Clark family. The description of the worship generally mirrors the worship of FBCCV during those years. One of the things that I find very interesting is that the pastor of the church was Jerry Babylon. Jerry was one of my best friends during High School and College. We sang in a Quartet together that represented the Cal Baptist Seminary (where Ken Pagaard attended). It is a small world isn't it. Linda and I had occasion to eat with Jerry and his wife here in San Diego last year. He is still going well -- loves the Lord and is serving him.

I always love the "In the Family" section. I suppose that for all of us who were in the church at this time it brings forth many memories. I certainly remember when Misty and Cheri came and were placed with Helen Fast. Later, their mother Susan came and lived in community and became their real mother again. I think that they still have a relation with Helen though. The old Shiloh house which became Third Avenue house was purchased with the proceeds of the house that Linda and I owned before moving into community (Mike Sandez also was a part of this -- I don't remember all of the financial details.) Thus we became owners of a Community house -- although we never lived there. I remember later when we sold that house; interesting times!


The rest of this page details some of the things that seemed important at the time. Of course the composing machine (way before PCs) really changed the look of OLT. The little note about announcements is quaint; I was scribe for the elders.

These last two pages advertise one of our "Pastor's Week of Renewals." These were always interesting times of meeting new (to us -- me) pastors from around the country. As a long time American Baptist layman -- yet with a "place" in the church, I was always excited about these times. They were "heady" to me.