Robert Lowery

On July 13, 1958–a Sunday evening as I recall–I responded to the sermon and the hymn “All to Jesus I Surrender” and was baptized into Christ that same evening.  Maurice Fetty, relatively new to the church staff, took my confession, walked me back behind the worship center, and led me into the water for the baptism.  I remember it vividly.  Following the baptism, Maurice brought me before the congregation one more time, and two of the elders served me my first communion in front of the entire congregation.  Bobby Lowery was now truly a disciple of Jesus.

Earlier this summer I made a decision to return to Fairfax Christian Church in Indianapolis and visit the place where my walk with Christ began.  I asked my wife Marilyn to go with me and we met Tom Adams (we were baptized the same year) and his wife Donna to make the pilgrimage with us.  When the preacher found out we were coming, he extended an invitation to me to preach.  I accepted.

Now most of the folks who nurtured me are now with the Lord in the Phil. 1:23 sense.  Some widows and widowers remain, but the majority of the elders, deacons, Sunday School and Vacation Bible School teachers, and youth sponsors are no longer around.  As I walked the hallways I was moved to tears in recalling the profound impact the Fairfax folks have had in my live over the years.  Because I grew up in a non-Christian family, I was closer to members of the Fairfax family than my own flesh and blood.  My spiritual blood ties are with Fairfax.

It was at Fairfax that I first heard the Gospel story . . . first attended Sunday School and Vacation Bible School classes . . . first participated in youth group activities. . . first saw what Christian families looked like.  Sunames like Adams, Turner, Smith, Jordan, Hurst, Mast, Shawver, Hoschouer, Williams, Nungester, Calvert, Cline, Hart, Abbott, and others shaped me.  It was at the urging of an elder (Ted Williams) that I preached my first sermon (a 45 minute one at the Lighthouse Mission on North Meridian Street) as well as my second sermon (only fifteen minutes) from the same pulpit I preached from on Sunday, July 20–I couldn’t be there on July 13 because I was returning from teaching at Haus Edelweiss outside Vienna, Austria).  I saw foot-washing done by those disciples of Jesus who identified themselves with the Fairfax congregation.  It was those disciples who supported me financially and through their prayers as I weaved my way through various educational opportunities, from college all the way through a PhD program in Aberdeen, Scotland.  (On my fortieth birthday my mother gave me a scrapbook filled with pictures of my childhood; the pictures showing the influence of Fairfax dominate the pages–church choir, youth group activities, camp experiences, etc.)

It was at Fairfax that I first learned to love Scripture and was challenged to live it out and proclaim it.  One of the earliest memories I have is Mr. Mast, one of our elders (His first name is unknown to me; he was always Mr. Mast and will be addressed as such when I see him again!), teaching a class on Hebrews at a Wednesday night Bible study.  I was around ten years old, but for some reason I remember him telling me that Paul probably did not write Hebrews.  Now that is not an earth-shaking revelation, but such is the kind of instruction I received.  In Sunday School classes we built models of the Tabernacle and the Temple.  I was a “Jet Cadet” for Jesus.  I attended Junior Worship Services where we watched Parables from Nature filmstrips accompanied by scratchy long-playing records.  We had our sword drills in which we would hold out our Bibles like swords and the teacher would announce a passage (let’s say, Micah 4:2) and we would race to see who was the first one to find and read it. We were challenged to memorize pieces and huge chunks of Scripture. It was at Fairfax that I learned to work with the homeless and visit nursing and children’s homes.  And it was the good folks at Fairfax who encouraged me to go into preaching and teaching ministry.  I will be forever indebted to them.  In every sermon, lesson, or piece that I write there is a bit of Fairfax shining through.

The text I preached from on July 13, 2008 was John 3:8.  I led the people through John to explore the Wind of the Spirit at work in the life of Nicodemus in John 3, 17, and 19 and challenged them to continue to put themselves in the path of that Wind that had led so many faithful members of Fairfax over the years.  I asked two questions.  First, how do we put ourselves in the path of the Wind of the Spirit?  And I reminded them that we put ourselves in the path of the Wind of the Spirit by studying together, hearing sermons together, singing and praying together, breaking bread together, serving together, to name just a few of the ways.

This week I thought of that sermon and the influence of Fairfax in my life when I read the words from a song by Lani Smith and Thomas Boomershine, “God Who Calls Us to a Journey:’ 

Make us Lord a pilgrim people
Free to move at Your command
Form the myst’ry of the future
Into a new promised land
Send the fire and cloud before us
Be the guide along our way
Till the new land lies before us
Sparkling in the bright new day.

I asked the folks on July 20, why should we put ourselves in the path of the Wind of the Spirit?  Why should we be a pilgrim people?  And I asked them to quote for me one of the first passages I ever memorized:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Related posts:

1. Revisiting Where My Walk With Christ Began