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| The
Birth of Penn Christian Fellowship |
I sat dozing in the women’s lounge at
the University of Pennsylvania after an all-night nursing
job. Periodically I woke up with the thought, Where at Penn
can I find an equivalent to Nurses Christian Fellowship? The
Bible study group at Hahnemann Hospital was my home base when
I was a student nurse. It gave me staying power as a Christian
and provided me with a Christian family. But where at the
University of Pennsylvania would I find Christian fellowship,
get some questions answered and keep going with Bible study?
Two thoughts bounced back and forth in my mind. I remembered
the impact of the monthly meetings offered by InterVarsity
Christian Fellowship. They were eye-opening and mind-stretching,
and they pointed to Jesus Christ with great power. The problems
I grappled with were the subjects we discussed. The speakers
were scholars in major fields. They scratched where we all
itched.
I also remembered a Bible study led by a heavy-duty theologian.
He was sincere and well-meaning, but the content of the study
was far removed from my world or campus life. I was far from
motivated to return to that study.
Fortunately a new staff member for IVCF stopped by and showed
me and a friend, Jeanne Kirkman, some new issues of His magazine.
They looked great—they had a real student feel to them.
Jeanne and I talked about starting an IVCF group Bible study.
We would need a room in the Christian Association building
and permission to meet. We knew others from Tenth Church and
other places who would join us, and we knew we could get direction
from IVCF staff. The hurdle was getting permission from the
director of the Christian Association, Dana Howe. We prayed
and went to his office.
We both had cold feet. We were viewed as fundamentalists,
and we didn’t expect much generosity. “You go in,”
Jeanne said. “Take some His magazines with you to show
him.” I opened the door timidly and went in. He greeted
me cordially but cautiously. I showed him the magazines and
told him that a few of us wanted to start a Bible study connected
with the group that published the magazine. Could we have
a room?
Mr. Howe fingered the magazines intently and was more than
a little impressed. “Well . . . if you don’t call
yourself something weird like ‘The Pennsylvania Disciples
of Christ,’ you can meet. There is a room on the third
floor that you can have once a week.” He didn’t
say it, but I felt as though he was putting us three flights
up to get us out of the way (forgive me if I sound ungenerous),
in the hope that our study would pass unnoticed by anyone.
Yippee! Hooray! We had made it. Besides the study room, we
could also use other facilities in the building, like the
Ping-Pong and pool tables. Jeanne and I left rejoicing, giving
thanks to the Lord. It was wonderful in our eyes.
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Who Sent This Joker Here?
Paul’s acceptance to InterVarsity staff was nearly stalled
by his penchant for clowning. He stood out among the pool of candidates
as “a jokester.” He later heard that on his arrival for
training a senior staff worker complained, “Who sent this joker
up here? Are you trying to wreck the place?” His clown label,
however, was quickly surpassed by his unmistakable inner drive to
follow God.
The state of Illinois was Paul’s first assignment, though his
responsibilities also took him to Missouri and Kansas. That year
English evangelist Leith Samuel came to the American Midwest for
a series of daily outreach events, and Paul was included in the
backup team. Their job was to supplement the evangelist’s teaching
with mini-sessions in the dorms, urging students to come for open
dialogue and questions. The staff felt something like Daniel in
the lion’s den—waiting anxiously for God to intervene.
They agreed in advance on a signal: if a staff worker needed help,
he would pull on his elastic watchband. The other staff workers
would use that cue to interject a further answer to a difficult
question or end the meeting.
Some students wanted further information about Christianity, so
the staff workers began to offer students booklets with basic information
about Jesus Christ or guidance for living the Christian life. A
variety of titles changed hands at those meetings, such as Have
You Considered Him? Is Christianity Credible? Did Christ Die in
Vain? How to Succeed in the Christian Life and Becoming a
Christian. From that point on Paul rarely went anywhere without
two booklets in his pocket, to be offered to audiences or individuals
wherever he spoke. In later years he used Becoming a Christian and
How to Succeed in the Christian Life almost exclusively.
After a year in Illinois, Paul was asked to move to New York City,
where I met him soon after. Together we served the dense concentration
of students in Long Island, Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan. The
number of students was overwhelming in itself, but the task was
further complicated by the fact that most of them commuted to school
and worked part time. We divided our time between American and international
students, and it was not uncommon for us to be on the road from
early morning until late at night.
In June 1953, after two years in New York, Paul felt the need for
some concentrated study of the Bible. He applied to Wheaton Graduate
School, back in Illinois, and was quickly accepted. We both had
mixed emotions about Paul’s leaving: we had grown accustomed
to being together.
Bigger Than Both of Us
I was delighted when after a week at Wheaton, Paul called on the
phone and said, “It’s bigger than both of us; let’s
get married.” Not the usual proposal, I grant you, but I didn’t
need much persuasion. Like Lucy watching Schroeder play the piano,
I was fascinated by Paul. I left InterVarsity in December 1953,
and we were married by Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse in my home church,
Tenth Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. We went from there to
Wheaton, where Paul continued his studies and I took up nursing
again to support us, paying for our $25-a-month basement apartment.
Paul earned his M.A. degree cum laude in August 1954, and we moved
to his parents’ home in Philadelphia. In October Paul was admitted
to Presbyterian Hospital for closed heart surgery. (Open heart surgery
was still at an experimental stage.) The surgical team opened his
funnel-shaped pulmonary valve with a scissorslike valvulotome, making
the valve bicuspid. His inner heart blood pressure immediately returned
to near normal. “A phenomenal result,” the surgeon told
us. We gave thanks for God’s guiding hand.
Paul was rarely funnier than when he told stories about his healthcare
escapades. He liked to tell of his first heart catheterization,
while he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania. He recalled
lying on the operating table wondering why the doctors were arguing.
As it happens, they were arguing whether the needle had entered
Paul’s vein. The procedure caused a necrosis the size of an
orange on his arm; the dye had leaked into the skin tissues. After
a week had passed, Paul noticed a black surface developing under
the bandage on his arm. He wrote a letter to his doctor—“Dr.
Trembles” as Paul told the story—describing the problem
and asking what he should do. Horrified, the doctor tracked Paul
down by phone and told him to come immediately to the hospital for
a skin graft.
Paul’s candid attitude toward his heart condition always amazed
me. We talked to every doctor we knew, read medical journals at
the library and prayed constantly about any possible treatment.
Yet I can’t imagine the energy he would have had without his
heart problem. I couldn’t keep up with him before the closed
heart surgery, and I couldn’t keep up with him after
the surgery.
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