Rabbi Hillel

Rabbi Hillel was one of the great heroes of the Jewish People. He served in a position that combined religious and secular leadership, and was the highest position of leadership in Jewish Society during the several centuries preceding and several centuries following the destruction of the Second Temple. Hillel himself lived at the beginning of the century preceding the Destruction.

In addition to his contributions to the understanding of Jewish Law, he is famous for a number of incidents in his personal life, and "ethical" pronouncements that he made:

Most famous perhaps is the incident which occurred before his rise to leadership, when he was not yet a scholar, but had a burning desire to study Torah. At that time, Torah study was tightly controlled and limited only to those of the highest caliber and to those who could pay for it. Hillel, working then as a woodchopper, did not have enough money to pay for entry into the Beit Midrash. On a freezing cold snowy day, he climbed onto the roof of the Study Hall, and lay at the "skylight" listening to the lecture, until he froze. When the scholars below observed his form above, they retrieved him, and changed the policy such that anyone who wished to study Torah could come in and do so.

A certain non-Jewish "wise-guy" came to scoff at the Torah, first to the home of Shammai, then to the home of Hillel. He said, "Teach me the Torah while I am standing on one foot." Shammai, sensing his true intention, had him thrown out forthwith.

When the individual came to the home of Hillel with the same request, Hillel responded. "No problem! The main idea of the Torah is 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Everything else is commentary. Now, if you're really interested, go and study the commentary." So impressed with Hillel's response, according to Jewish Tradition, was the visitor, that he took Hillel up on his instructions, began to study the Torah seriously, and became a Jew.

Source: http://rabbihillel.com/

This final quote which grows out of the same theme:

"What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow;
that is the whole Law; all the rest is interpretation."

Eugene Peterson

Eugene Peterson is most known for his contemporary paraphrase of the Bible known as The Message. In this fresh paraphrase of Scripture, Peterson's exegetical abilities are strengthened by his way with speaking in the language of today, forged by some thirty years of pastoring.

"The pastorate," says Peterson, "is one of the few places in our society where you can live a truly creative life." Indeed, this man has been creative. With eighteen books, numerous contributions to others, and dozens of journal and magazine articles to his credit, his writing career has been nothing short of prolific. No minor accomplishment for a man who at the same time pastored Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland, for twenty-nine years before retiring from the pastorate in 1991.



Among Peterson's books are several designed from one pastor to other pastors. In his book, Under the Unpredictable Plant, Peterson used the story of Jonah to speak to the vocation of being a pastor. Two brief quotations follow from this book:

I want to study God’s word long and carefully

so that when I stand before you and preach and teach

I will be accurate.

I want to pray, slowly and lovingly,

so that my relation with God will be inward and honest.

And I want to be with you, often and leisurely,

so that we can recognize each other as companions

on the way of the cross and

be available for counsel and encouragement to each other.

I want to be a pastor.

I want to lead people in worship each Lord’s Day

in such a way that they will be brought

into something large and beautiful -

into God and his salvation (not reduced and demeaned).

And I want to be with them through the days of the week

at those times when they need verification

or clarification

of God’s continuing work and will in their lives

(not promoting sure-fire moral schemes,

not bullying them into churchly conformity)

so that they can live orginally and praisingly.

Few of us will take the time or consider ourselves qualified to re-write scriptures in contemporary language...

but consider the possibility that your lifestyle

may be someone's introduction to God's Message for the world today.

You may not be called to be a pastor...

but is that any reason not to study God's word

long and faithfully

so that you may be prepared

to share it accurately when the occasion presents itself;

or to pray slowly and lovingly

to maintain an inward and meaningful

relationship with God;

or to be available to others

for counseling and encouragement.

May your Journey this day lead you inwardly to God and outwardly to others.

Howard Thurman

In 1944, Dr. Howard Thurman helped found the first intentionally interracial church in this country, where he served as co-pastor with a white clergyman. A professor as well as a pastor, he became the spiritual advisor to the next generation, including Martin Luther King, Jr.

This African-American pastor and poet,

wrote these words in a poem called

“The Work of Christmas”—

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the Kings and Princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flocks,

The work of Christmas begins.

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry

To release the prisoner,

To teach the nations,

To bring Christ to all,

To make music in the heart.

As the season of Christmas and New Year's Day vacations come to an end, as you presumably find yourself returning to a more normal routine, and the Christmas tree and decoration have been put away until next year - may you also find that the work of Christmas begins.

On your Journey through Life, look for opportunity to keep Christmas alive each day.

Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven is a well-known German composer who remains one of the acclaimed and influential musicians of all time. As a young man he began to lose his hearing with a ringing in his ears that made it difficult for him to hear and appreciate music. Nevertheless, he became one of the great composers.

The story is told that in his later years Beethoven would spend hours playing a broken harpsichord. The instrument was worthless. Keys were missing. Strings were stretched. It was out of tune, harsh on the ears. Nonetheless the great pianist would play till tears came down his cheeks. To look at him, you'd think he was hearing the sublime. He was. For he was deaf. Beethover was hearing the sound the instrument should make, not the one it did make!

-told by Max Lucado

What makes your heart sing as we move into this new year? Do you hear only the "Out of tune" sounds coming the world press today? Are you burdened by the sounds that are harsh to the human ear? Or are you able to hear the music that God means for us to hear in our lives and relationships with others? Are you able to hear what God intends rather than what is?

May this be a day in which you hear the sound of music all around you on your journey of life.

Dag Hammarskjold

A New Year brings a new direction for this web site. During 2008 we focused on the 300th Anniversary of the Church of the Brethren. We recalled individuals of the church who preceded us on this Journey through Life.

In 2009 we hope to take a wider look at Life's Journey as seen through the eyes and thoughts of other travelers on the Yellow Brick Journey. Today we begin with Dag Hammarskjold who served as Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1953 until 1961. Many of his private thoughts were later published in a book titled simply Markings.

Dag Hammarskjold was born in Sweden in 1905 and died on September 18, 1961, in an air crash will flying to Northern Rhodesia to negotiate a cease fire.

I have long valued the phrase with which he begins one writing in 1950:

The longest journey

Is the journey inwards.

I pray that 2009 might for many of us be a journey to our inner life as we become more in touch with who we are as a child of God. I believe that this longer journey will help us to better understand who we might yet become.

Again, in 1952, Hammarskjold wrote these words:

How long the road is.

But, for all the time the journey

has already taken,

how you have needed

every second of it

in order to learn

what the road passes - by.

I pray that during this coming year you may value each moment of journey as you keep all your senses open to learn as you continue your journey down this yellow brick road of life.

White Christmas

Brethren missionaries in the Far East faced grave danger in the face of the Japanese war of aggression that led to United States involvement in World War II. Some escaped through harrowing circumstances, but others, such as Lloyd and Ellen Cunningham, were captured and interned by the Japanese during the war.

The Cunninghams, along with their then two and a half year old son Lloyd, Jr., were in the Philippines after Pearl Harbor. They had been serving as missionaries in China since 1938, but they had moved to the Philippines for advanced language study in 1941. On December 29 of that year the three were imprisoned, and were not liberated until February 3, 1945.

It was over 32 years later that Ellen Edmister Cunningham decided to write down some of her memories of that era. Her account of her imprisonment is filled with stories of hunger and want. At one point, she wrote, "Our calories dropped to about 600 per day. Breakfast consisted of a cup or two of very bad tea. The natives pointed out some wild greens that were edible so we spent hours picking and cleaning these leaves that grew in the back of the compound. Those mixed with a little oil and lots of water furnished our noon meal of soup."

Through the latter part of her imprisonment she relates that on more than one occasion the rumors of an Allied advance were tempered with the fears that they would be killed by the Japanese to prevent their liberation.

On their last day of imprisonment they heard American tanks and wondered if this would also be their last day on earth. But their Japanese captors had fled. Even so they had a difficult time convincing their liberators they were Americans, who thought that all the prisoners of war had already been set free.

Their son, who by that time was five, had never seen a loaf of bread and asked what it was. Then Ellen asked one of the American soldiers if World War II had produced any memorable songs like the previous world war.

"The soldier with whom I was talking thought a moment and then he said, 'I don't think of any war songs, but have you heard White Christmas?' Of course we hadn't, so he called one of his buddies over and had him sing it for us. I thought it was such a beautiful song and even yet I get goose bumps when I hear it and it brings back memories of that long ago night."

Source: Frank Ramirez, Tercentennial Minutes for December 28, 2008

"White Christmas" is an Irving Berlin song whose lyrics reminisce about White Christmases. The morning after he wrote the song — Berlin usually stayed up all night writing — the songwriter went to his office and told his musical secretary, "Grab your pen and take down this song. I just wrote the best song I've ever written ... the best song that anybody's ever written!"

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

Just like the ones I used to know

Where the treetops glisten,

and children listen

To hear sleigh bells in the snow

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

With every Christmas card I write

May your days be merry and bright

And may all your Christmases be white

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

With every Christmas card I write

May your days be merry and bright

And may all your Christmases be white

Dan West: The Brethren in the Future

Writing in 1947, Dan West suggested that "in the last third of a century we [the Church of the Brethren] have moved so far and so fast that were my own father to return he would not likely recognize the same church to which he belonged."

Many of these changes, Dan believed, had demonstrated the genius of the Brethren in action. ... Dan concluded that the future was "uncertain as yet but potentially far beyond anything in our history."

According to him the question was, and still is, whether the Brethren would continue to develop their social policy as rapidly as they had done in the past fifty years, or whether they had reached the point where an inevitable leveling-off would take place.

Perhaps Dan would say today, as he wrote in the family's Christmas newsletter in 1944:

God is still in his heaven ...

and here on earth too

trying to help us floundering mortals

to learn how we ought to live

in homes, in churches, in communities,

and in the world.

He shouldn't have to wait so long on us!

Source: Passing on the Gift, Glee Yoder

Christmas Eve 1940 - Kenneth Morse

In 1943, Kenneth Morse began a thirty-five year tenure on the denominational staff. He edited youth publications from 1943-1950 and became as editor of The Gospel Messenger in 1950. In 1965 he and his staff radically changed the magazine's appearance and the name was changed to Messenger. In 1971 he became book editor for Brethren Press but continued as associate editor of Messenger until his retirement in 1978.

Morse was noted as a poet and hymn writer (including "Move in Our Midst"). A book of his hymns, poems and prayers, Listen to the Sunrise, was published in 1991. The earliest of the poems is a meditation for Christmas Eve, 1940, when our country was preparing to conscript its young men to serve in a war that came a year later. It seems appropriate for this day as well.

Christmas Eve, 1940

Will the angels sing on the hills tonight
When the world is weary with war?
Will they sing again of peace on earth?
Will the shepherds hear them once more?

Will the wise men see the star tonight
While the fires of hate burn high?
Will they bring to the child their gifts of love?
Will they find his star in the sky?

Will the Lord God intervene tonight
To halt the hatred of men?
Or will this night of horror spread
To cripple the world again?

To the ears of faith the angels sing,
To the eyes of hope the star leads on;
To the hearts who wait the Lord God speaks;
To the world he gives his son.

Sources: The Brethren Encyclopedia
Listen to the Sunrise, Kenneth I. Morse

Bill and SueZann Bosler

Bill Bosler was pastor in Miami, Florida's First Church of the Brethren. He went about his work largely unnoticed by our denomination or by the city where he worked. He served in a racially troubled neighborhood. Under his leadership, the Miami congregation grew from 12 to 70: Salvadorians, Haitians, Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, whites, American blacks and others. The poor, the alienated, the struggling, the young were among those he served.

Bill Bosler died the way he lived: reaching out to a young stranger in a poor, high-crime area filled with violence and danger. At 2 p.m. on December 22, 1986, he was murdered at the parsonage by someone who came to his home asking for help. He died with love toward the young man who attacked him.

SueZann Bosler, Bill Bosler's daughter, walked into the room where he father lay dying from knife wounds. His killer turned on SueZann, slashing her three times in the back and twice on her skull. Pretending to be dead, her life was spared. When the man left, she called for help.

It took months for SueZann to recover from the physical and emotional trauma she had suffered. Her lifelong opposition to the death penalty was put to the strongest possible test. Her father's convictions about the sacredness of life helped sustain her during that time. Several Bible passages strengthened her view that "only God has the right to take a human life."

The intruder, James Bernard Campbell, was arrested and convicted. The judge sentanced him to die in the electric chair. SueZann went to the judge to plead that the killer's life be spared. Since that time she has become an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, telling her story and appealing as a witness to the way of Christ, a way that advocates mercy in place of vengence.

"I want to give James Campbell something," she told Annual Conference in an emotional appearance. "I want him to have a Bible."

Source: To Follow in Jesus' Steps, C. Wayne Zunkel

Dan West: The Word Became Flesh

Dan West lived what he believed.

Thurl Metzger said of Dan, "Dan refused to eat cake until all could have daily bread."

Kermit Eby wrote: "Heifers, unlike bombs, are personal, particularly if you bring them up or sacrifice for them. Before they mature and become cows (giving their new host not only milk but the beginnings of a dairy herd) they become pets. Sent away to help the needy, a part of you goes along. Received by fellowmen in need, the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man is reaffirmed.

"And so once more the word becomes flesh; and brotherhood takes on meaning because first a simple Brethren dreamer and than a church realized that brotherhood knew no boundaries."

Source: Passing on the Gift, Glee Yoder

Elder Landon West

A native of Ohio, Landon West studied at the New Vienna Academy operated by James Quinter and taught public school for several years. He was called to the ministry in 1864, the same year he was married at the age of 23.

Although progressive in many ways, Landon West remained with the German Baptist Church (Church of the Brethren) in the 1881-83 division. He was a strong advocate of the Sunday school movement and mission work among blacks in southern Ohio.

Poor health forced Landon West to end his extensive travel and preaching around 1887 although he continued his writing, including frequent contributions to church periodicals. In 1900 the family moved to Miami County, Ohio near Pleasant Hill. He had eight children, among them his son Dan West.

Among his many writings, perhaps his most original work was "Eden's Land and Garden with Their Marks Yet to be Seen" (1908). He received wide recognition for his carefully presented theory that the Great Serpent Mound near his boyhood home in Adams County was the site of the biblical Garden of Eden.

West's theory differed markedly from the notions of archeologists who visited Serpent Mound after it was first surveyed in 1849. The mound is about one thousand feet long, in the form of a serpent whose bent body and curled tail extend along a hilltop. The serpent's jaws are opened wide as if ready to devour an oval shaped object.

West believed that the mound was created by the hand of God as a lesson to the world, that its forms were symbols of Satan and of the forbidden fruit with which the serpent tempted Eve. West is reported to have said, "This figure is the most ancient record of history known to exist. It shows first sin and its immediate results as Moses also records them.... [It] supports the written or inspired history of the human race."

According to archeologists, Serpent Mound is one of many "effigy" mounds built by American Indians around 1000 BC. Some were used for burial purposes; others may have been intended for religious rituals.

Source: The Brethren Encyclopedia

Katharine Drexel

On October 1, 2000 Pope John Paul II canonized Katharine Mary Drexel who became only the second recognized American-born saint in the Roman Catholic Church - and the only official saint with a Brethren mother.

And now for the rest of the story.

A young Brethren woman, Hannah Jane Langstroth, was raised and baptized by the German Baptist Brethren in 1850. She married into the wealthy Drexel family of Philadelphia to Francis Drexel, a banker and partner of J.P. Morgan. In 1858 Hannah Jane Langstroth Drexel gave birth to their second daughter Mary Katharine. Thirty-four days later Hannah Jane died and was buried in the Germantown Brethren cemetary. She would not live to see the wonderful ministry of her infant daughter.

Although Katharine never knew her mother and was devoted to her step-mother. According to one biographer, Katharine and her sister Elizabeth regularly visited in the home of their mother's family in Germantown where they played with their cousins and learned to crochet from their grandmother, who wore the Brethren plain dress. Who knows what else they learned from the Brethren side of their heritage.

At the age of thirty, Katharine gave up her social position as the member of a prominent family and chose a religious vocation. She founded the Blessed Sacrament Sisters for Indians and Colored People. For many years she chose to live on less than a dollar a day while she poured more than a thousand dollars a day into the charitable and educational projects she initiated and supported. Over a period of sixty-four years, she contributed to these causes between twelve and seventeen million dollars from her inheritance.

Katharine traveled widely in order to know personally the living conditions of American Indians in the West and blacks in the South. Her contributions helped in the establishment of Xavier U., an institution in New Orleans aiding the education of blacks.

While Katherine was often called saintly, an official petition that she be regarded as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church was introduced in 1964 by Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia, less than ten years after her death. When canonization finally came on October 1, 2000, Katherine became the first official saint with a Brethren mother.

Sources: The Brethren Encylopedia

Wikipedia

Dan West: Faith

Dan was periodically known to write down a brief outline of his faith beliefs, adding "here is the outline (incomplete) of my best interpretation now. In a few more years it ought to be better and fuller."

A note written by Dan on an envelope ... postmarked January 27, 1961, expressed his continuous search for truth: "Sometimes I wonder if I am out of it for clinging to such things as hope, faith, and love. Camus in The Stranger (1946) would say that I am. But my life is too much grounded in facts of love. This I know. Deep as these doubts are that Camus helps me to see within me, my present direction - is faith!"

Source: Passing on the Gift, Glee Yoder

Anna Mow - writing on faith

In the introduction of her book, Springs of Love, Anna Mow shares the following thoughts which grow out of her many years of mission work in India:

A young minister asked me, "What do you think of Zen Buddhism?"

I said, "I have been interested in Zen Buddhism and other mysticisms of the East for years, but have you heard about the Holy Spirit?"

Americans who have never taken God's promises seriously and have been undisciplined in their lives, of course, find great benefit from seriously practicing quiet times and accepting disciplines for their lives. A guru from India is reported to be persuading 30,000 converts a month to his method of finding inner peace. He promises relaxation with alertness, decreased blood pressure, decreased anxiety, increased individual self-esteem and capacity for intimate contact, increased creativity and personal satisfaction in life and work.

On the other hand, I know many Hindus who were previously devout in the faith they inherited but later found it inadequate. When these people found the reality of Christianity they gladly accepted the new truth even when it meant disinheritance and persecution. We need not be frightened about the inroads of foreign faiths, if we know what we really have in Christ.

Source: Springs of Love, Anna Mow

Anna Mow - writing on wives and husbands

Anna Mow in her teaching in the church often touched upon the subject of wives and husbands.
Wives, submit yourselves to your husband as to the Lord. (Eph. 5:22)

This is one of the most misinterpreted verses in Scripture. The verb is not even repeated in the original Greek, and this is only a participial phrase added on to verse 21. The verb is in the previous verse where it is given as a law for all human relationships. Whatever basic attitude is required for a wife toward her husband is also, therefore required of a man in all his relationships.

I think the Apostle Paul applied this statement to wives first because he thought that women who were created to be mothers would be the first to understand what quality of life he was talking about.

... I know some Christian women who have been told they must "obey" even non-Christian husbands because a woman must obey a man! That is easy to answer if he asks her to do something wrong because the relationship is to be "in the Lord." There is no difficulty in the woman-man relationship if both are truly committed to the Lord. ...

"For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head
of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior." (Eph. 5:23)

Many Bible people talk about the "order of command": God, Christ, man, woman. I have no objection to the order, but the use of the word command is not Christ-thinking. Especially as it is usually defined in this instance.

... In 1 Corinthians 7:4, Paul made them partners. Aristotle, 300 years before Paul, said that man is superior and woman is inferior, that man was made to rule and woman to be ruled. It is particularly relevant that in that social context Paul made them partners.

Then man's headship is described as the same as Christ's headship. And Jesus said He did not come to be ministered unto but to minister (Matt. 20:27,28, KJV). He also said, "Whosoever would be great among you must be your servant." (Matt. 20:26) So European theologians in 1952 came to the conclusion that a husband is the head of his wife when he is her servant!

Authority for the Christian is power for the benefit of others and never power over them. If we can find this secret in the closest human relationship, we will be able to live it in all of life.

Source: Springs of Love, Anna Mow

Anna Mow - writing on "being subject to"

Anna Mow was loved and appreciated in the Church of the Brethren for her teaching - in hundreds of churches and in her books. The following teaching on Ephesians 5:21 is excerpted from her 1979 book, Springs of Love. "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ."

When relationship to another person is called "being subject" to that person, it really his hard. No one wants to be anyone's doormat. The fact is that there is nothing in all the Bible which says that anyone is to be another person's doormat. ... So what does it mean to be "subject to another?"

The Greek verb tanslated "be subject to" ... means "to arrange under" or "to put yourself under." The important thing in this is that a choice is implied. It does mean "take anything that happens to you." It is not passive, docile resignation; it is not cringing self-effacement or mere complaisance. It is choosing the best welfare of the other one.

...

We do not have two areas in our hearts for our relationships - one for God and another for other persons. We act according to what we are in the depths of our being. No person, man or woman, can be humble and reverent toward God and then act or feel arrogantly toward any human being.

So the ability to love and respect another person depends upon our relationship to God. This is the reason that true fulfillment comes first of all out of one's commitment to God. Because of this God relationship we can see all people as God sees them. ...

We usually call this having respect for one another. Even children need to be respected. When we see God's love for every individual it is also easier to have respect for ourselves.

Source: Springs of Love, Anna Mow

continued tomorrow

Anna Beahm Mow

Anna Beahm was born in Virginia and educated at Hebron Seminary (1909-14), Bethany Bible School, Manchester College (A.B. 1918), and Bethany Biblical Seminary (B.D. 1921; M.R.E. 1941; Th.M. 1943). During her first term at Bethany, A.C. Wieand actively recruited her for the faculty in spite of her well-known intention to become a missionary to India.

From 1923 to 1940, Mow served as a missionary in India where she established close ties with Vijaya Pandit, sister of Nehru and later president of the United Nations, and E. Stanley Jones, noted Methodist missionary and evangelist.

After joining the Bethany faculty where she served until 1958, Mow taught courses in Christian education and the devotional life and sponsored the popular Thursday night student prayer meetings for many years. Deeply committed to Keswick Higher Life spirituality, like her brother William Beahm, she believed that the primary human problems were spiritual and that "secular service , which is merely human goodwill, is not enough."

In a pointed 1947 essay, "The Surrendered Life," Mow observed that surrender "to missions, service, even Brethren service, to temperance, to peace ... even to prayer" was not what God required. As she noted, "The surrender must be to God as revealed in Jesus Christ, our Lord. It is not a commitment to a cause or an institution, it is a commitment to a Person, the divine Person, first of all."

If people respected Mow for her deep spirituality, they loved her for her humor and common sense. When a young pastor's wife with three small children confided to Anna that, given the great needs of the world, she felt she had no right to own an automatic washer and dryer, Anna informed her that there was far greater simplicity in the ownership of such devices than in a life of slavery to the basic necessities of life.

Not ordained until 1960, Mow's greatest contribution to the church was as an author and speaker. From the late 1950s until the early 1980s, she developed a virtual celebrity status, extending far beyond the Church of the Brethren. Immensely popular in evangelical circles, she averaged ten "revival" or evangelistic engagements a year by the mid-1960s and authored a series of widely read books.

In response to the 1960s' Charismatic movement, Mow dryly noted that since Brethren had a "special dip in baptism for the Holy Spirit," they ought to be in the forefront of the movement. Insisting that the mission of the church was reconciliation, in the late 1960s Mow stood with a young man who had burned his draft card on the floor of Annual Conference, admiring his courage although she personally opposed such actions. As she noted in the midst of the turbulence of the late 1960s, "Being conservative or liberal is not the important matter at all. The question is always, "What is Christ-like?"

Her calm in the midst of the passions of youth, whether inspired by the charismatic renewal or social radicalism, greatly reassured a troubled church. People marveled at the ease with which she bridged the so-called generation gap.

Source: Bethany Theological Seminary: A Centennial History

by William Kostlevy

William Beahm at Bethany

Note: Earlier references to William Beahm may be found on April 13 and 16.

William Beahm was the son of noted Brethren evangelist, educator, and theological conservative I.N.H. Beahm. He served as a Church of the Brethren missionary in Nigeria from 1924 to 1937. Upon his return from Nigeria, he began the pursuit of a PH.D. at the University of Chicago. His return came at the same time that Rufus Bowman was named president of Bethany Seminary. One of Bowman's first acts as president was to name Beahm as professor of theology and missions. In 1944 Beahm was named as dean at Bethany where he served until his retirement in 1962.

William Beahm was truly an unforgettable figure, noted as a "connoisseur of words and idioms." He combined his famous dry sense of humor with a remarkable ability to remember names and faces. In addition to his heavy responsibilities at dean, Beahm served the Church as secretary of Annual Conference from 1942-1953, and as Moderator in 1954 and 1959.

Beahm was deeply committed to the church. As a theological moderate, he often criticized both liberals and evangelicals for failing to see that the church was an end in itself. As he noted, the Social Gospel tradition's tendency to reduce the mission of the church to the promotion of a particular social agenda had the same deadening effect upon the institutional church as Fundamentalism's tendency to push the kingdom entirely into the future. He wrote in 1947: "The church is not self-centered but God-centered when she nurtures and perpetuates her inner life. This inner life, by the same token, is nurtured by God."

In a time when many emphasized service to the exclusion of evangelism and mission, Beahm remained a traditionalist. Standing squarely in the tradition of A.C. Wieand, he emphasized both the reality of sin and the transforming power of the gospel. Although he frequently quoted liberals, Beahm believed that humanity's central problem was sin and Christ was "our savior because he saves us from sin." In one of his notable quotes, "Sin is a raspberry seed under God's denture."

Beahm died in April 1964.Earle Fike noted in his funeral sermon, "In the Bible, it is of paramount importance to know who you are, and to do this you must know from whence you came and to whom you belong. Brother William knew to whom he belonged ... and therefore he knew the One to whom all rightly belong. In Beahm's words, everyone is a person "for whom Christ died."

Source: Bethany Theological Seminary: A Centennial History

by William Kostlevy

Dan West: Heifer Project

A Gift of Life is A Gift of Love

These words, printed in large letters, greet you as you drive up the road to the entrance of HPI. They ring true as you tour the ranch and talk with its dedicated staff. As one member confessed: I formerly looked at our help merely as providing animals for those in need. Recently, I've come to see more - it also gives new meaning to life for those of who share with others through the giving of the animals.

The Dan West Education Fund, established as a memorial to the founder of HPI, is to be used to support volunteers who manifest his spirit and who are able to give training in animal husbandry to recipients of HPI livestock. Thurl Metzger said of these volunteers: [They] have an overwhelming opportunity and responsibility. They must gain the confidence of the poor and the respect of the powerful. In addition to being technically qualified they should reflect 'the fruits of the spirit which are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance' plus a good sense of humor.

These qualities "manifest Dan's spirit," whose gentle voice was rarely raised except when he talked about the accomplishment of HPI. Then he got really excited. "Too much has already been said as if I were responsible for this. The credit belongs to God and should be given to him. It was God in the hearts of farmers who actually raised the heifers and in the hearts of the many, many people who have helped."

"Yes," responded an interviewer, "and God in the heart of a man who listened for the voice of God in the whispering grass and the wailing babies and the sobbing mothers."

Source: Passing on the Gift, Glee Yoder

Thurl Metzger

While Dan West supplied the idea for Heifer Project International, Thurl Metzger supplied the hands that made it a worldwide success.

Born near Sidney, Indiana, he taught school from 1938 to 1942 while graduating from Manchester College in 1941. Drafted into the army in 1942, Metzger registered as a conscientious objector and was sent to a camp in Michigan. He later went to work in an agricultural unit at the University of Minnesota.

Unable to find a teaching job after the war because of his conscientious objector stance, Metzger began working with Heifer Project and became the organization's representive in Europe. When Ben Bushong retired as executive director in 1951, Dan West asked Metzger to take over the job.

Metzger immediately launched a campaign to increase support for HPI and guided its incorporation as an independent, nonprofit corporation in 1953. From an office in North Manchester, he successfully guided HPI during years of tremendous growth. He travelled extensively from the very beginning.

He also wrote extensively, and his stories were often published in Messenger. He wrote of his dismay that cheese, butter, and grain were piling up in warehouses in the U.S. while much of the world was still hungry. He appealed for more understanding of the problems in Latin America and urged Brethren to share food to build peace as a positive way to demonstrate the will of God.

HPI's impact under Metzger's direction has been felt around the world. In the late 1970s, the Korean Minister of Agriculture stated that half the chickens in his country were offspring from HPI chickens sent after the Korean War.

Metzger finally retired in 1981 after guiding HPI for 30 years. During a farewell address at his retirement, Metzger said, "The road to development is very long, it is filled with frustrations, and it is, in fact, more of a pilgrimage than a plan ... A sense of destiny requires that we have a firm belief that this is what God wants us to do ... and that we are willing to take risks, with God as our final evaluator."

Source: Planting the Faith in a New Land: Church of the Brethren in Indiana