Gerry Charlotte Phelps

Reformation UCC Interview - Part 5

     Jesus Washing Disciple's Feet

(After the World magazine article about me appeared on 2-6-08, here, Rev. Chuck Huckaby asked me to do an interview for the Reformation UCC online newsletter, here .This is Part 5 of the interview, here )

Gerry Charlotte Phelps: From Radical Activist To Radical Christian - 5

February 7th, 2008 · No Comments

Editor’s Note: This is another installment in an interview with Gerry Charlotte Phelps (click her name to see the other articles in this series).

ReformationUCC: You’ve recently retired. What message do you want to convey to Bible Believing Christians in the mainline churches? To others?

This is my message: Don’t quit. Don’t leave. Don’t give up. Stay in your denomination and fight. The tide is beginning to turn!

In the United Methodist Church, it has been a long, hard slog. Like you, we Bible-believing Methodist pastors have been passed over, ignored, sometimes hounded and occasionally fired. We’ve been invisible most of the time, voiceless almost, without power in most ways. Like you, we gathered ourselves into groups. The number of those groups kept increasing. We had a newsletter, then a magazine. We learned the politics that our opposition knew so well. Then we began to prevail on a few more issues, then a few more.

Meanwhile, the new seminarians coming into the clergy were more and more conservative theologically. That has been going on since the 70s, when the professors at my liberal seminary were alarmed about it. It is happening more every year. And the great bulk of United Methodists still believes the Bible and wants their pastors to as well.

Finally, we are seeing that we are likely to win control of the denomination in just a few more years. What if we had given up earlier?

Maybe that is why God has simply refused to let so many of us leave and go where we would be more at home, but has kept us within our denominations. I, for one, yearned to leave through the years, but God never gave me the freedom to go.

As for us Methodists – I suspect John Wesley has been addressing God about us without let-up ever since he got there. No doubt your founders are doing the same. Along with all those who have gone on before us. And God does seem to be on the way to answering their prayers. I don’t think it will be much longer now. God is good!

Reformation UCC Interview - Part 4

    Jesus Washing Disciple's Feet

(After the World magazine article about me appeared on 2-6-08, here, Rev. Chuck Huckaby asked me to do an interview for the Reformation UCC online newsletter, here .This is Part 4 of the interview, here )

Gerry Charlotte Phelps: From Radical Activist To Radical Christian - 4

February 6th, 2008 ·

Editor’s Note: This is another installment in an interview with Gerry Charlotte Phelps (click her name to see the other articles in this series).

ReformationUCC: What myths about the poor did you once hold that your Christian faith (and perhaps the school of hard knocks) has changed? How have these beliefs changed?

My myths about the poor actually came from our culture, not from my Christianity. Christianity is very solid on how to help the poor. It also lists and condemns the causes of poverty. What my Christianity supplies is the powerful motive to help the poor. It is a scriptural commandment.

Our major myths about the poor are about how to help the poor, and about what the causes of poverty are.

Myths about how we should help the poor are what I was talking about in my answer to the last question. The first myth is that the ideal way to help the poor is to give them what they want, or what they think they need, not what they actually need. And the second myth is that never embarrassing the poor or making them feel bad is much more important than helping them to stop being poor. The other big myth is about what causes poverty.

There are actually many causes of poverty. But the mix of causes varies from country to country, and from time to time within each country. If our actions to help the poor are to be effective, we must know what the mix of causes of poverty is in that particular country at that time.

It turns out that what we think causes poverty also shapes our politics. When we think the poor are poor because they are oppressed, that moves us left politically. When we think they are poor mostly because of inadequate use of available opportunities, that moves us right politically. (See my article “The Power of the Poor”) Since both oppression and availability of opportunities are at society-wide, they are often addressed politically, rather than with a person-by-person approach.

On the left, the ways to protect people from oppression range from Marxism at the most extreme left, to various degrees of mix between capitalism and Marxism as leftists move toward the center. On the right, fairly pure capitalism and a high degree of freedom are considered the best antidote, not only to oppression, but also to poverty.

I started out on the extreme left, and during the time I worked with the poor, I moved to the right because of two things: first, what I learned from working with the poor, and second, what we all learned when the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, giving us our first clear view of the disastrous results of the 70 year Marxist experiment in the Soviet Union. As a leftist economist, it took me a few years of strenuous re-evaluation to process that. At the end of that process, there was an almost-perfect match between my new economic understanding, and what I had already learned about the poor in the U.S. Oppression simply was not a significant cause of poverty, at least not in the U.S., nor in most of the West.

Why is that? It is not that oppression does not exist in the U.S. Of course it does –oppression is part of the human equation. But what seems to happen most of the time is that there is so much freedom and prosperity in the U.S. that people can usually get away from whatever kind of oppression they may face. Is the boss oppressive? There are other bosses, other jobs, even self-employment. Is there some kind of discrimination? The economy is so large, so rich and so free that there are many roads around discrimination. Is there a lack of education? That can be remedied. Has a job become obsolete? There is training available for other jobs. Is a business being oppressed? It has many legal recourses. Or it can simply get up and move, to another location or town or state or country. Or the owner can pull his capital out of that business and change to another one. Would-be oppressors are much less successful in the U.S. than elsewhere. All of which makes it much easier to stop being poor.

Well then, if oppression is not a major cause of poverty in the U.S., what is? It has long been thought to be lack of education, racial discrimination and an unfair wage structure. Although these each have their own effect, none of them, nor all of them together, are a major cause of U.S. poverty. So what is? In the U.S., some 80% of the poor are unmarried moms and their children. That is, the major cause of poverty in the U.S., at this time in our history, is fatherlessness.

That’s not all, fatherlessness is also the major predictor of violent crime. Surprised? The experts were too. That was information they backed into while looking for other things. They found that 70% of the most violent young offenders in prison were fatherless. Now mapping fatherlessness has become the most reliable way to map violent crime.

The remarkable thing is that fatherlessness on such a large scale is totally new in U.S. history. We have never seen such a thing before. In 1960, the rate of births outside of marriage (fatherless kids) was 5.3%. Today it is 36% - a 700% increase! (See Chapter 6 of “Up and Out,” at www.gerrycharlottephelps.com.) That’s not all: during this socially-disastrous period, violent crime also has risen by 500%, teen suicides by 300%, and divorce by 200%. Our tremendous wealth merely disguises the fact that we are living through a national time of great trouble.

So where does fatherlessness come from? From births outside marriage, of course, which in turn comes from having sex outside marriage. People have always done that, and there have always been fatherless children. But before 1960 it was on a very small scale. Now it is on a huge scale – and considered normal.

So you want to help the poor? Are you sure? Even if it means cutting back on the rate of fatherlessness? Even if that means returning to the customs of celibacy before marriage and faithfulness after marriage? No more co-habitation? Or hooking up? Because until we are willing to do what it takes to push fatherlessness back to pre-1960 levels, we cannot honestly claim to be concerned about the poor. Think about it.

This is what we are facing. The primary cause of most poverty in the U.S. is basically something we do not want to hear about, much less to do anything about. Where does that leave us?

It leaves us with our Biblical mandate to help the poor. When such a great change is needed in society, there is only one way. That is to change the culture through Christ. That is to evangelize like crazy, and to disciple Christians to live according to the scripture like never before. The more people who do that, the fewer fatherless kids there will be. And as that number drops, there should be fewer poor, as well as less crime and a much more benign society..

The hard thing about Christianity is the personal sacrifice. Fortunately, it is the kind of sacrifice that makes all of society better and better, in measurable ways that cannot be denied. Just as Christianity has always done in every place that it has been faithfully practiced by enough of the people.

So our job is clear. Patch up the poor we have, and help them move up. And practice our Christianity strenuously, to the point that society heals and the number of poor among us shrinks more and more. Down deep, haven’t we always known that?

Reformation UCC Interview - Part 3

    Jesus Washing Disciple's Feet

(After the World magazine article about me appeared on 2-6-08, here, Rev. Chuck Huckaby asked me to do an interview for the Reformation UCC online newsletter, here .This is Part 3 of the interview, here )

Gerry Charlotte Phelps: From Radical Activist To Radical Christian - 3

February 5th, 2008 ·

Editor’s Note: This is another installment in an interview with Gerry Charlotte Phelps (click her name to see the other articles in this series).

ReformationUCC: You have extensive experience starting effective ministries for the poor. What misconceptions about serving poor people do you believe that the average mainline churchgoer has that prevents effectiveness?

GCP: Our misconceptions about serving poor people that prevent our being effective in helping them? Let me start by saying that my book, “Up and Out: A Guide to True Compassion for the Poor” would be the place to begin. It is a condensation of what I learned about how best to help the poor. That came during 18 years of helping some 5000 poor people move up, in 2
very large homeless shelters plus a charity for non-homeless poor, all of which I started and ran, in 3 cities in 2 states, with a consistent 65-75% success rate. I posted the book online to be read for free, at www.gerrycharlottephelps.com (chapters listed in column on left.)

The most common misconceptions about the poor are about: why they are poor, what are the best ways to help them move up, and what would help society produce fewer poor people.

There are two basic ways to serve those who are already poor: The Hand-Out and the Hand-Up.

The hand-out is easier for us, worse for them. Yet it is what the poor prefer, and what they will try to push you to do. It is what we usually prefer too. It is easy, quick, and gets rid of them. It also brings that wonderful feeling we get when we help the poor, for the lowest cost to us. But the hand-out could actually help kill them, by enabling their addictions. (Most of the old homeless are no longer homeless. Those few left are the hard-core, almost all addicts; plus the few women they can pimp to stand on a street corner and beg.)

Then how should we help them? Try my chapter 25, “Guidelines for Giving”

Giving the poor a “hand-up” is so much better! And that can be much, much better done in a good program, which is the best way you and your churches can help them. Chapter 25 introduces that idea too. Most churches are small, but they can often collaborate with other churches to have a unified program to help the poor.

How to get some churches together to do that? See my Chapter 27, “Churches At Work With the Poor“

What should such church programs look like? See my Chapter 24, “What a Good
Program Looks Like,”

It may be a good idea, in order to limit liability exposure for the churches supporting such a unified program, to make it into a free-standing non-profit. How would you go about that? See my Chapter 28, “Good
Faith-Based Charities,” and my Chapter 29, “Starting Up a Charity”.

What are the poor like? See Chapters 3 - 6. How did they get that way? See Chapters 7- 11. What could we do to change that? See Chapters 12-13. What do the poor need most? See Chapters 14-17. What do volunteers need to know most? See Chapters 18-23.

“Up and Out” is the best beginning I can offer, to learn what you need most to know, in order to be truly compassionate toward the poor. And at least for the present, it can be read for free.

Reformation UCC Interview - Part 2

     Jesus Washing Disciple's Feet

(After the World magazine article about me appeared on 2-6-08, here, Rev. Chuck Huckaby asked me to do an interview for the Reformation UCC online newsletter, here .This is Part 2 of the interview, here )

Gerry Charlotte Phelps: From Radical Activist To Radical Christian - 2

February 4th, 2008

Editor’s Note: This is another installment in an interview with Gerry Charlotte Phelps (click her name to see the other articles in this series).

ReformationUCC: You have extensive experience in revitalizing mainline congregations. What can your average smaller mainline church do to “get back in the game” instead of continuing to decline? What “worked” for you?

GCP: What worked for me was learned in four parts.

One: making myself start evangelizing, in prison, simply because it was a scriptural commandment. It was hard at first, but the first time was the hardest. The second time a little easier, and finally I evangelized at every opportunity, everywhere I could. I recorded each convert in my Bible, name and date, which I still have. There were 19 of them in prison. I continued evangelizing “targets of opportunity” after paroling, and in seminary - where I found there were at least some unsaved people.

Second: being trained in a more effective way to evangelize, one-on-one, the Evangelism Explosion way. Using that, I was able to lead as many people to Christ in the next two years as I had in the previous six years.

Third: learning to EVANGELIZE CHURCH MEMBERS. That was the real key. Lillian Jordan taught me that. She was a 72-year-old retired nurse and life-long Methodist who transferred into my first church. As a discipling tool, I insisted all new members go through a short membership course with me before they could join the church. Our source book was an Evangelism
Explosion-type booklet designed as the first discipling tool for brand new Christians.

The class was around the dining table in my parsonage, with Lillian on my right. We simply went around the table, with each one reading a paragraph out loud. When it was Lillian’s turn, it was something about the necessity of accepting Christ as Lord and Savior to become a Christian.

When Lillian finished reading it aloud, I had begun reading the next paragraph when Lillian interrupted, pounding on the table. “Wait a minute, wait a minute!” she insisted loudly. “I’ve been in the Methodist Church my entire life, and nobody ever told me that before!”

“Yeah? Well.” I said, and just continued reading the next paragraph aloud. (I’m not very sensitive.) She interrupted, pounding the table again. “Wait a minute, wait a minute! Shouldn’t we stop right now and let me do that?” So she made her pastor stop droning on and lead her to Christ. We prayed together as she accepted Christ. And then I picked up reading aloud again where I left off. Like I said, I’m not very sensitive.

In a few seconds, I realized Lillian was crying. I said “Lillian, what’s the matter?” “I don’t know,” she said. “I just feel so happy!” So she got her pastor to stop and rejoice with her because she found Christ. That was at age 72, after a lifetime in the Methodist church!

That really made me think. Were there any more like her? How many? Who?

Somehow I knew not just to stand up in church and ask them to identify themselves. They couldn’t anyhow, if they were like Lillian. Like her, they might not even know. Besides, most of them would be mortified to have others in church know.

So here’s what I did. I went quietly to each church family, in their homes, and presented the gospel to them, preferably the whole family at once. The beauty of the EE method of evangelism is that it is so diagnostic, making it relatively simple to tell if they ever converted or not, and making that clear to them, a step at a time. It was rare that they did not want to accept Christ right then. It was really beautiful seeing how many of them changed after that, growing in their Christian walk and character.

I never told anyone, at any church, that I was evangelizing church members. Some might have considered it a breach of their privacy. And I didn’t want the others on their guard and expecting me!

Fortunately, if approached considerately and in private, unconverted church members are the easiest converts ever. Like Cornelius in the book of Acts, they already love God. Like him, they just need someone to show them “what they must do to be saved.” And then to disciple them.

After going through as many of the church members as possible, I learned that only 12% were converted before I got there. (It was 12% in my next church, also in California, and 17% in my third church, in Texas.) It was about 56% when I left. Later I read that George Barna, the Christian pollster, found that even in the most evangelistic churches, not more than 50% of the people in the pews were actually converted. In the mainline churches I pastored, it was much, much less than that.

So I learned not to make assumptions about church members. We assume they are saved, and that they are well-taught. Most are not saved, and most - even after a lifetime of Methodist Sunday School classes, workshops and conferences - are not well taught. They are like college students in advanced classes who never had the basic courses first.

Fourth: I learned to disciple them! But by going back to basics, basics, basics. We started with a good, simple survey course on the Bible, before focusing in on parts of it, using Henrietta C. Mears “What the Bible is All About.” We did the whole Bible in a year, at breakneck speed. I would teach the same lesson three times a week, so that they could find time to attend at least on of those times. I planned sermon topics a year in advance, on just the basics. I hounded them into reading their Bibles through once a year. We learned to pray regularly alone, and also together in small groups.

What happened? After about my fourth month at each church, each moved from hand-to-mouth finances to running a financial surplus, which grew steadily throughout my time there. That was even though I never asked them to give. (I did preach on tithing twice a year, but just so they would receive the blessings of tithing. I even told them once we really didn’t need the money, that I just wanted them to be blessed.)

They also got compulsive about asking people to church; I did not have to ask them. The next thing that happened was that many people started noticeably changing. And the next thing was that the church began to grow.

In each of my three churches, they grew at a pretty steady 12% a year. Not spectacular, true, but it just kept adding up. And that was without changing the music, the parking lot, the signage, or adopting most of the excellent church-growth techniques available. If we had done that too, who knows?

At my last church, I began holding workshops, seminars and teaching at Pastor’s School at the request of some District Superintendents, to teach these methods to other pastors, including some in other states. I also consult on these methods.

Reformation UCC Interview - Part 1

     Jesus Washing Disciple's Feet

(After the World magazine article about me appeared on 2-6-08, here, Rev. Chuck Huckaby asked me to do an interview for the Reformation UCC online newsletter, here .This is Part 1 of the interview, here )

Gerry Charlotte Phelps: From Radical Activist To Radical Christian - 1

February 3rd, 2008 ·

Editor’s Note: This is another installment in an interview with Gerry Charlotte Phelps (click her name to see the other articles in this series).

What follows in separate articles are some questions and answers directed to Rev. Gerry Phelps, a radical activist turned radical Christian by the grace of God. This is important because many in the mainline share at least the first half of her story. They are passionately committed to leftist causes and methodology. They simply don’t have the courage or perhaps the naivete to act upon their convictions as she did by attempting an armed robbery to fund her activism. Or perhaps they have seen the church as a ready source of funding for left wing politics without the risk associated with an armed robbery? Whatever the case, her story needs to be heard by mainliners of every stripe because Rev. Phelps left her radical activism behind in becoming a radical Christian instead.

A self-described “Ex-agnostic, ex-far-left radical, ex-university economics teacher, and ex-con” she writes and ministers from a wealth of experience.

Why would a former Black Panther recruiter become a “recruiter” for Jesus?

How could a person devoted to questioning the “establishment” in toto eventually come to see one of the institutions she’d questioned, the church, become her home and the center of her ministry?

What transpired to make her faith in Marxist economics implode?

Many mainline leaders still indulge the myths and false solutions she came to reject.

What made the difference?

“Out of the Iron Furnace” tells her story in depth.

Ultimately though it was a personal encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in Holy Scripture.

Her passion for the poor never changed.

But the solution she came to offer became Jesus Christ Himself, not the mythical Marxist utopia of her Christless dream world.

ReformationUCC: What turned you from being a radical leftist into a bible believing Christian?

GCP: What turned you from a radical leftist into a bible believing Christian?

Actually, I did not stop being a radical leftist when I became a Bible-believing Christian. I combined the two. In fact, I remember asking a good Christian, early on, “How can you be a Christian and be a Republican? The change from radical leftist to conservative took many years. (You can read about that in my book, “Out of the Iron Furnace,’ at www.outoftheironfurnace.blogspot.com, in Chapter 33.)

How I went from agnostic to Christian is another matter. It happened in two stages.

Stage one was when I suddenly encountered God, in a way that would convince a scientifically-trained skeptic. One day in jail, shortly before transferring to prison, God just showed me he was there. It happened in a few, powerful seconds, but in a way that I could never doubt it happened, or that it was God. (See Chapter 11 in my book above.)

That totally changed my world, instantly, turning it upside-down. I had to start all over again, re-thinking everything. Knowing that God exists does that. Still, I hoped he was not the Christian God. I didn’t like Christianity. So I wanted him to be any god but the Christian one. But I loved him, so I kept trying to find out who he was, and what he wanted with me. That led to stage two.

Stage two was being convinced, intellectually, that God was the Christian God. (See Chapters 12 and 13.) I set the terms. It was to be on my own turf, which was rationality, logic and evidence. No faith allowed. So this is what God did to me. On my own terms, over a two-year period, I was driven intellectually into the Christian corner, much against my will.

Eventually, the day arrived when the last piece fell into place, and I had to accept that the whole thing was literally true. My scientific training meant that when I set up standards and they were met, I had to yield. When I was wrong, I had to admit it. So I knew what I had to do then, but hated it.

On that day, I was in the Isolation tank of Goree Prison, which was down in the basement on the side viewing the kitchen wing. So I got down on that concrete floor at that steel bunk in the basement and said to God, “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.” It was no sweet surrender. It felt more like someone’s foot on my neck. What it meant to me then was laying down the flag, surrendering the sword – a battlefield surrender. I was crying with sheer frustration from losing – probably the most miserable Christian in the world at that minute. I didn’t know then about the love, joy and peace on down the road. All I knew was that yielding then was the only honest thing I could do. I had been beaten on my own terms, fair and square. And that’s how I became a Christian.

Later, the joy and peace came, and still later, I was called “to preach good news to the poor.” But that is another story.