Re: The Living Word Fellowship, The Walk, John Robert Stevens
Date: October 18, 2014 05:50AM
( Some History )
When I came into the church November of 1965 - there was no yelling going on in the services. If there would have been - at that time - I would have ran away and never attended another service. But when the church began filling up with young people in the late 60's to the early 1970's things changed. I remember many of the youth coming to church barefooted, and many young women and some older women came to church barefooted, wearing long wrinkled skirts, tattered shorts, midriffs, bell bottom jeans and many were braless and the majority of the eldership was older and they were dressed in suits but John Robert Stevens made room by the things he was preaching for every one to be able to worship God together with out any one feeling like a 2nd class citizen. He did not tell the youth to put on shoes or to cut their hair or to dress in a respectable manner suitable for church. The youth did that themselves over a period of time.
And for the older people who might have been having difficulty receiving the youth of that day into the church both those in the congregation and those on the platform - I remember a sermon about how you can not pour new wine into old wine skins, because old wine skins will burst . break. John caused there to be a flexibility and a mutual acceptance of one another - for all who entered the doors of the churches he was pastoring, by the things he preached out of the Bible in those years . That is what I observed, and saw taking place.
So where did the yelling in the services come from , when did it begin ? I believe it came into existence ( in part ) from one of the sermons John Stevens preached out of 2nd Kings 13. where Elisha the prophet gave the King of Israel arrows and told the king to strike the ground with the arrows, and the king struck the ground 3 times with the arrows and stopped. Because the king had not struck the ground 5 or 6 times, Israel did not receive a complete victory which was available for Israel, had the king struck the ground with the arrows 5 or 6 times.
Elisha the prophet did not tell the king how many times to strike the ground with the arrows.
In hearing this story out of 2nd Kings 13 - the congregation which was a good majority - of young people - I believe the youth responded to what they were hearing by raising their voices and yelling loudly - by loudly proclaiming what ever they proclaimed - This was how they responded to the message they had heard - realizing what can be lost with out - up to double the effort.
Allogorically speaking - the youth - I think - by raising their voices and yelling - were expressing - their way of striking the arrows against the ground. And they did not stop loudly proclaiming - yelling for a long time, and for many years to come..
They were never told to shut up or to lower their voices just like they were never told to put on shoes or to cut their hair. According to my own observation, being present to hear and see these things and by my recollection.