Graham daughter speaks at Bowery Mission in New York City
(Editor's note: As of Sept. 5, this posting was revised. We regret the errors in the earlier version.)
Anne Graham Lotz wowed the homeless crowd at the Bowery Mission in New York City yesterday.
Taking time off from a tour promoting her new book about Abraham, The Magnificent Obsession, Lotz told the men and women at the mission about how she deeply wanted a more vital relation to God.
She asked the audience if they “ever felt left out, felt shut out, that the world has discarded you?”
“Listen to me,” she said to the group. “No matter how shut out you are, this is not all there is. There is nothing at all that God won’t forgive.” (Click here for Time magazine's author interview.)
From the crowd of homeless, some nine individuals came forward during her altar call to pray with Lotz that Jesus would come into their lives.
James Macklin, director of outreach at the mission observed, “I know those guys and the one woman who went up. They are in search of change. Mrs. Lotz’s delivery, gently appealing without condemnation—she didn’t do it with thunder and roaring but with a gentle spirit. It had an impact on them.”
To some people, Lotz doesn’t seem to fit the picture of someone who could talk to people from the other side of the tracks.
She seems to be an evangelical princess, the cloistered daughter of Billy and Ruth Graham. She married young to a star basketball player and moved into a comfortable suburban lifestyle. She dresses elegantly and conservatively, favoring pin stripe pant suits with a white blouse, highly polished open back pumps and a single pearl necklace and earrings. In her new book she remarks, “It has been religious people, often within the organized church, who have been the most critical of and even hostile to my relationship with God. It was religious people from the board of deacons who voted to remove my nine-year Bible class from their church facility.” In an interview last fall with CT she mused that “I wondered why God hadn’t made me a man.”
Yet, she was effective at the Bowery.
A key to understanding the empathy that Lotz has with people on the street is to know that one of her favorite childhood books is A Little Princess. In the book a young rich girl gets thrown into poverty and becomes a scullery maid. One Christmas the girl passed a wonderful family gathering with food, presents and a beautiful tree. As her face pressed against the window, she began weeping.
During her address at the mission, Lotz asked the audience if they ever felt like the girl in that early 20th century novel, an outsider looking into another world where people had healthy relationships with God and fulfilling lives.
In interviews with Christianity Today this week, Lotz reflected on her own life. She hadn’t gone to college and her family life was good but her relation to God was not all it could be.
She told Time magazine that she felt trapped “in small talk and small toys and small sticky fingerprints.” That was about 1974.
Around that time, on a family outing from New York City to Cape Cod, their station wagon blew a tire, the first of four blowouts on that trip. Her mother-in law was "sitting in the back, waiting, and reading to no one in particular about the church in Philadelphia described in Revelation 3.” The words of this passage indicate that Jesus holds the key to open and shut the door to God's kingdom and the passage suddenly grabbed Lotz’s attention. “They spoke to me.” She decided to do something.
At the time, she had been seeking to participate in a local Bible Study Fellowship in order to study God's word more deeply. There were no fellowship classes nearby and no one seemed willing to start one. The doors seemed shut tight. But in the car she decided to knock on the door again. The Bible study ministry eventually agreed to come to her vicinity. She was living in Raleigh, North Carolina.
From the late 1970s until the late 1980s, Lotz was the teacher of this weekly local Bible study group. Also, she was drawn into the lives of hurting people, including criminals serving time in prison.
In the 1980s, the infamous serial killer, Velma Barfield, was waiting on death row when she heard the Gospel message on the radio that she could be forgiven of her sins. She became a Christian. Later, she wrote Ruth Graham, who asked Lotz to contact Barfield. The daughter agreed with trepidation. Barfield's lawyer contacted Lotz. And Lotz was added to the list of people approved to visit Barfield.
“I was so terrified when I arrived at the maximum security prison. My hand shook so much that my signature was just a squiggly line on the registry.”
The two women met, and Anne discovered her to be eagerly seeking spiritual insight. They started to bond over prayer and reading the Bible together. Their meetings took place frequently. Barfield became a light in the prison but she was still on death row.
“Even God let Cain off from the death penalty.” With this message Anne asked the North Carolina governor to halt the execution. In the midst of a heated senate election Governor Jim Hunt denied the appeal and Barfield was executed by lethal injection in 1984. “I was a state witness to her execution,” Lotz observes.
Later, Lotz started a Bible Study Fellowship at the North Carolina Women's Correctional Facility in Raleigh that grew to 300 participants. It is now a weekly Bible study ministry known as Shepherd’s Heart.
Periodically, Lotz teaches at this facility. “Last Christmas 220 came to Christ. The leaders of the Bible study are people I trained.” This occurred at a luncheon event put on by the men's Bible study that her husband leads.
On Wednesday, Lotz came to the Bowery Mission in part to commemorate another anniversary—her marriage to Danny Lotz of forty-three years. Just before walking into the 100-year-old chapel of the mission, Lotz called her husband, who came to Christ at age 5 in Vacation Bible School, to reminisce about their memories of the Bowery Mission and New York City. Danny’s father was a street preacher in the New York City area and preached at the Bowery Mission.
Danny was a very talented basketball player. At age 15, Danny was about to start as a freshman on the high school varsity team. Danny's father told his son he would have to miss the first game because he had agreed to play the trumpet at the Bowery Mission.
Recounting this time, Anne says, “He saw his father preach and the reaction of the men. He was moved.” On the way back home, his father pulled off the side of the road, “Danny, you have to decide. Jesus says, ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things would be added to you.’ ”
At that moment Danny knew that for him it had to be Christ first, basketball second. The integrity of his commitment was one of the things that attracted Anne to him some years later. (As it turned out, the basketball chapter finished on a high note since Danny played on the University of North Carolina team that won a national championship in triple overtime against the Wilt Chamberlain team from Kansas.)
So, when Anne spoke at the Bowery Mission, she had a memory, a preparation and presence that was natural.
I asked Lotz about her Dad, who she said was stable. “His spirit is good but he does not have much energy.” He has many health challenges but is walking around with a walker and having people read to him. She said Billy talked about how every day he looks forward to seeing Ruth in heaven.
Anne told the audience at the Bowery Mission, “Death is a door. When we close our eyes in this life, we will open our eyes to Jesus.”
Tony Carnes is a senior writer for Christianty Today.
(Photos: Tony Carnes/Christianity Today)
Posted by Tim Morgan on September 3, 2009 10:02AM
Comments
I like hearing good news from the CT blog. What a great story. Keep it up!
Posted by: Matt K at September 3, 2009
"There is nothing at all that God won’t forgive." That is indeed very good news, but kind of presumptive and condescending (don't you think?) in that homeless mission context in which she preached.
She seems to be presuming that one is homeless because of one's doing of something horribly sinful, so sinful that pretty much only God can forgive it; that homelessness is a punishment for a terrible personal sin of some sort... That homelessness is some sort of cosmic justice and punishment as a consequence of personal sin.
Us dreadful, evil liberals think of homelessness as suggestive of possible societal injustice, and not necessarily the consequence of personal sin. Plenty of people who have done deeply sinful things are not homeless, are unforgiven and unsaved; indeed, may appear to be doing quite well.
Sure, the consequences of personal sin can push/pull one into homelessness, as the Parable of the Prodigal Son illustrates, but one can be a victim of just plain bad luck, bad timing, an unfortunate confluence of events largely beyond one's control and abilities to ameliorate. As a person with a genetic disease, I can testify that there is such a thing as just plain bad luck, no sin required for that.
If you do exactly as Lotz says, or at least how I read this article...the horrible personal sin that brought one to a state of homelessness is erased by God himself. Lotz has judged you as being punished for sin and sentenced to homelessness. But, if you do as Lotz says, your sentence is lifted... you therefore have been sort of "cured" of sin, of sinful homelessness.
Therefore, one "chooses" to be homeless and destitute if one doesn't choose do exactly as Lotz commands. Take up your pallet nd go forth to the lovely gated communities that you now deserve as a reward for being God's faithful regent.
I would suggest that she meditate on the Book of Job.
Her good news of God's forgiveness of sin needs to reworked for context. That's good news that can liberate, but when presented within the wrong context, can be news that oppresses, represses, stresses and discourages one. What can be presumed as quite likely for a prison ministry, can't necessarily be presumed for a homeless ministry.
Jesus, after all, was born in a manger, of no fault of their own temporarily homeless parents, and was rather rootless as an adult. He "chose" to be homeless?
Posted by: Gregory Peterson at September 3, 2009
I love how God showed His love and compassion through Anne.
That's what I picked up with this article. She cared, by
the grace and love of God, working in her, to witness God's love. That's powerful. There are so many homeless
people right now. I pray for them. I'm sure Anne does, too.
Situations in life can turn almost in an instant, but God..
God wants His message of love, compassion, and mercy to go
forth. He will use who He will.
It sort of reminds me of this home somewhere in the middle
of my town. They aren't homeless per se, but they don't get many visitors. I came to know a woman named Rose. She
wanted a dollar. I stood and spoke with her a couple of
minutes. I asked her if she knew Jesus loved her. She nodded, yes. We spoke just a few seconds more, and I gave her the dollar. A smile processed on her face. The following week, I saw her in front of that home--a home
for people who don't have relatives. She was sitting on a
bench. I stopped and called her over. I talked with her a
moment, and handed her another dollar. That's God...that's
His Spirit moving.
So, giving God the Glory, and thanks to Anne Lotz for being a willing vessel...to be used for His glory.
Posted by: Maggie at September 4, 2009
Greg, I think you completely misread Anne Lotz' intentions. I think everyone, everywhere, whether in a homeless mission, or church, or jail - wherever - needs to know that there is nothing God will not forgive. I don't think that she was implying at all that homeless people are where they are because they have done something wrong. Our preconceptions and misconceptions cause us to read things into an article or person's comments that just aren't there and I'm as guilty of it as you are.
Posted by: muse at September 4, 2009
God's desire to forgive is rhetorical. "Is there anything to hard for the Lord?"
Anne Lotz is right on target. God calls individuals into the ministry of his choosing, as he did her, and he calls men and women out of a life of sin in all of its manifestations. People need to hear the good news that there is a God who loves them and longs for them to turn to him.
I have heard Ms. Lotz speak and read some of her writings and she has always impressed me as someone with a servant heart. She is honest and does not generalise about her faults and personal challenges. There is an naturalness about her that is endearing. No wonder persons at the Bowery responded positively to her message of God's willingness to forgive.
The Church of Jesus Christ needs more individuals like Anne Lotz, unpretentious, unassuming, and fiercely committed to God's calling. I applaud her.
Posted by: Steve Skeete at September 4, 2009
Let me add to my previous comment that some Christians think that if something bad happens to you it is because you have a sin problem. However, I do not believe that is what Anne Lotz is suggesting.
Posted by: muse at September 5, 2009
I guess it's hard to decipher what Anne Graham Lotz was really trying to say here because of the limited context. I can see where Gregory Peterson was coming from - It can come across as presumptuous to associate a headliner of God's ability to forgive you for anything with the state of homeless. But I will give the benefit of the doubt that she was there to offer God's grace and love (and to sell her book, of course. Let's not forget why she is in the press to begin with!)
Posted by: Bradley J. Moore at September 7, 2009
I wouldn't give her the benefit of a doubt, myself. Lodz is one of those morally and intellectually bankrupt people who blamed 9/11 on God being angry that the US isn't essentially a Calvinist theocracy. This was emotional blackmail when the country was most vulnerable. Absolutely depraved...and, about what you'd expect from someone who'd address an Exodus International conference, which is also the action of someone who is morally and intellectually bankrupt...and a complete hypocrite on top of it. I know who her mother's friend and biographer was.
Lodz, like her father, are all about a racist-like (I didn't say "racist") religious privilege that acts very much like the white privilege system that Rev. Graham was raised within, and which CT (which Billy Graham founded with the tainted money of J. Howard Pew) passive-aggressively supported.
I've read most every issue of CT...officially anti-racist, but CT was also against the civil rights movement and most everyone and anything except personal prayer that might further civil rights. CT was downright infamous for its petty, petulant hostility against Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, in his lifetime...just serving its founder and chairman of the boards' vision, I guess.
Posted by: Gregory Peterson at September 8, 2009
So why do you bother to hang out here Gregory Peterson. Surely you have better things to do with your time than to keep track of the blogs and comments and "read almost every issue" of CT.
Posted by: Anne's Friend at September 9, 2009
I like being a contrarian, but being a moderately inclined person...lol
I want to know why people are attracted to the religious right, a movement that's generally so smarm and bad-taste addicted. Soaked in dubious conspiracy theories and bizarre. dualistic-neo-gnostic impulses and extremisms. Lost without a handy scapegoat or two.
Ever ready to reify an emotional story, and just as quick to demonize and denounce a strong probability. Contemptuous of authority -- while nakedly authoritarian. Nakedly greedy to take away everything the Gay community has, by a sort of 'soft' ethnic cleansing which Lotz obviously supports, but individually, often as kind and generous as people get. Generally anti-racism these days (though not in my youth), but very racist-like in propaganda, scapegoating, political tactics, theology and Bible literalism.
A smiling face does not mean a moral heart.
A movement that's never in doubt...and hardly ever right...lol. I exaggerate, of course, but then, there is also the possibility of being right, for the wrong reason.
And, opposition sharpens my thinking...I think. While being right is nice, but being proved inadequate in "getting" a social concept is exciting. I get to go out and hunt for a stronger theory, something more probable, or meme.
Not that I expect to persuade anyone here. As I say, I don't near trust stories as much as CT readers seem to do. Individual experience might illuminate a social trend, but its not to be trusted at all to legitimize anything. It simply means that some people have an appealing story, to some people.
For instance, just because some people have an emotional story about overcoming "homosexuality," doesn't mean that every Gay person therefore CAN "choose" to become an ex-gay...and therefore HAS "chosen" to be Gay.
It simply means that some people have an appealing story, to some people.
Some people may be flexible in sexual orientation (bisexual to various degrees), some people aren't, as Kinsey illustrated way back in the Forties.
Also, the Bible doesn't condemn "homosexuality," anyway. It didn't really exist as a social construct back then. The clobber verses used are spouted with the same sort of ill will and greed as the "inerrant" pro-Jim Crow, white supremacism clobber verses of my youth. How many times can the religious right "inerrantly" claim "wolf" anyway, and not get bitten?
Posted by: Gregory Peterson at September 10, 2009
I appreciate not only the story, but Anne Graham Lotz's unflinching boldness in her declaration that there is nothing that God cannot forgive. I heard Anne speak at the Exodus International Convention a little over a year ago and her message was powerful and persuasive, and thus very encouraging and empowering to those who struggle with unwanted same-sex attraction and the guilt of past acting out. Sometimes we get so focused on the lack of forgiveness we experience from some around us . . . and we mistake that as being representative of God, particularly if they are Christians. Their inability to forgive is just a failing, like ours. I am so thankful God has forgiven me and allowed me to move forward in the struggle to live a life reflective of his design for me.
This was a very encouraging post.
Thom Hunter
http://thom-signsofastruggle.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Thom Hunter at September 15, 2009
Lotz seems to very presumptuous on what needs to be forgiven. Bad luck that makes one homeless needs to be forgiven. Being Gay needs to be forgiven. What apparently doesn't need to be forgiven by God, however, is such a racist-like attitude...that "the other" is "the other" because of "sin."
Posted by: Gregory Peterson at September 17, 2009
Anne Graham Lotz' new book - Magnificent Obsession - is a gem. Distribute it to everyone you know - especially your Christian friends. My prayer is that there is a special mansion built for the Graham Family in heaven.
Posted by: Julie at October 5, 2009
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