Thursday, November 30, 2023
Feast of Saint Andrew, Apostle
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
From Lincoln Bible Institute to Open Arms
How can they call on him in whom they have not believed?
And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard?
And how can they hear without someone to preach?
And how can people preach unless they are sent?
These questions build on each other with the power of stages of a spiritual rocket, and they were the inspiration for the founding in 1944 of Lincoln Bible Institute with 13 students and 1 teacher, Earl C. Hargrove, who shouted from the pulpit, “The preachers are coming, the preaachers are coming!” LBI began in a church basement, then moved to a single building and finally to a beautiful campus, which gradually filled with new buildings, grassy green quadrangles, housing for married students who came from around the world, and a chapel that beggared the imagination, it was so beautiful. The acoustics seemed to be borrowed from the angels.
How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the Good News!
And now, not quite a hundred years later, the legacy of this institute/college/seminary/university is clear.
Their voice has gone forth to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.
How sad, then, that the buildings would no longer ring with the sound of students and professors, the gym would not host basketball games, the library would be closed. All emptied by Covid-19, I guess – when the epidemic was over the students just didn’t come back.
Perhaps over the latter years it waned in influence too, as churches lost their traditional shine for many, especially many college-age young people. It’s easy to blame the churches for not changing, or blame the people for not humbling themselves, or Lincoln Christian University and Seminary for assuming too much, growing too fast … or the opposite – not changing “with the times.”
But what point is there in that discussion now? The decision was made, and although the doors closed slowly, they did close (or will, in the spring of 2024).
In the meantime, in adjoining Dewitt County, our friends from Waynesville Christian Church, the Wolfs and Crawfords, invited folks to meet together in Wapella, Illinois on Easter 2007. They named their growing association the Open Arms Christian Fellowship. A year later Larry Crawford and his wife Wendy moved their fellowship to Lincoln, Illinois, where it flourished. The church needed more space and moved into larger quarters. Several of my family became members.
As LCU lost some of its footing in the last couple of years, Larry and the church’s elders considered a monumental, faith-driven move. Why not lease or purchase the chapel and make it home for Open Arms Christian Fellowship? And that  is exactly what they did.
Larry’s theological degrees are both from LCU. His dream of sharing God’s love with everyone around him, fueled by his prayers, energy, speaking skill and endless imagination, makes filling the chapel any given Sunday a likely thing.
We visited a month ago and watched it happen on that Sunday. Where sat an empty building on an empty campus, now there is something going on every day of the week. Open Arms also purchased the new gym, along with other buildings. Life in the Spirit abounds on the edge of small town Lincoln.
In the last two years both Lincoln College, founded in 1865, and Lincoln Christian University closed their doors. Lincoln might become an academic ghost town, lost in central Illinois. But Larry and his board do not expect that to happen.
In 1954 my mom and dad moved to a farm a few miles east of Lincoln Bible Institute. We watched the western horizon as buildings began to spring up, and eventually we saw the chapel rise high into the sky.
Come after me, said Jesus, and I will make you fishers of men.
Margaret came from Kentucky with her friend Pam for seminary classes at Lincoln in 1973, and she stayed. Ten plus years later, while we were at Waynesville Christian Church with Gary and Leah Johnson, Margaret and I became liaisons with the married students at LCC. We took classes there before we came to Urbana to do campus ministry. I drove from Urbana for graduate classes with Professor John Castelein, who like Henri Nouwen was educated in Belgium. Our son Chris and his wife Melissa earned their graduate degrees at Lincoln.
We are very grateful for the lifeblood of LCU, which infused our lives over and over for decades. Watching the mission of Open Arms fill that void for many others in new generations brings us great joy. Thank you, Jesus.
 (Romans 10, Psalm 19, Matthew 4, Matthew 4)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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