The editors tell me that in this issue of Adventist Today, I am supposed to be the voice of “wisdom and experience” in a chorus of otherwise young Adventist voices.

Interesting.

Dangerous.

I can hardly wait to find out what I am going to say. . . .

That last line, incidentally, echoes a powerful impulse among “young” Adventist voices. When I was in college (1960s), student week-of-prayer speakers were expected to submit completed manuscripts to their adviser, well in advance. The results were predictable: sometimes substantial, often dull, never surprising.

Today’s college students speak with passion and openness. But the focus is almost always personal. Don’t expect substantial grappling with the great questions facing humankind or serious interaction with a specific passage of Scripture. The pendulum may be swinging back toward greater substance and a stronger biblical focus. But I distinctly remember a student week of prayer a few years ago, when audience attention seemed directly proportional to a speaker’s confessed lack of preparation. Indeed, virtually every speaker would start with a deep breath and say, “Let’s pray.” Then, in quiet desperation: “Lord, I have no idea what I am going to say. Please be with me as I speak.” Because I was away for part of the week, I listened to several of the sermons by tape. That’s when I noticed that those opening lines had become virtually a fixed pattern.

Furthermore, in public worship in general, both hymnals and Bibles have become redundant. Everything you need is on the screen. Biblical and classical allusions don’t work anymore; the audience lives in a world of movies and contemporary music. The NIV pew Bibles in the College Church were a gift from the senior class a few years ago. But the rustle of Bible pages hasn’t returned. In the past, traveling Adventists didn’t need the Gideon Bible in their hotel room; they always had their own. Maybe all that is changing.

Meanwhile, in the classroom, our students have become handout dependent. Listening and watching have replaced reading and note taking. And the addiction is not limited to the young. Just walk through any Adventist retirement community and count the screens.

As I write, I am just hours away from giving the dedication homily for our religion and theology seniors. What should an “old” teacher tell them? When I was in college, our teachers told us they were preparing us to be the change agents of the future. Alas, churches typically aren’t interested in change. In a chaotic and dangerous world, church is supposed to be a safe haven, a place to meet the God who declared, “I am the Lord. I change not.” Church is a place to help us stay in touch with the Jesus Christ who is “the same yesterday, today and forever.”

But our own Adventist history vividly illustrates the danger of boarding an oceangoing vessel that stays in the harbor. The issue came to a head at the great “righteousness by faith” General Conference of 1888, just 25 years after Adventism formally organized as a church. “Let the law take care of itself,” Ellen White exclaimed. “We have been at work on the law until we get as dry as the hills of Gilboa, without dew or rain. Let us trust in the merits of Jesus Christ of Nazareth” (MS 10, 1890).

“As real spiritual life declines,” Ellen White warned, believers “discourage any further investigation of the truth. They become conservative and seek to avoid discussion. When no new questions are started by investigation of the Scriptures,” she noted, “when no difference of opinion arises which will set men to searching the Bible for themselves to make sure that they have the truth, there will be many now, as in ancient times, who will hold to tradition and worship they know not what” (Testimonies for the Church, vol. 5, 706-707 [1889]).

So I will tell our seniors that setting up housekeeping in a safe haven is not for us. Adventism is a coast guard cutter, not a houseboat. The law is a marvelous anchor. But Jesus is the wind in our sails and we must head out to sea. People are drowning out there. We can’t rescue the perishing from the harbor, and we don’t just gather by the river on this side. The real river is on the other side, and we face daunting challenges before we reach the only harbor that is truly safe.

But for all the unhappy things I see in the church (and I see plenty), I am excited about the present and future of the church. Young Adventists are making a difference in the world, getting on with things that matter. This year, for example, students on our campus raised more than $15,000 to help purchase a safe house in Calcutta, where girls from the red light district can escape the sordid trade that has brutalized their prostitute mothers.

This generation of Adventist young people is seeing more than just fun and games in our self-centered world. The vision is alive in young hearts and minds. That’s good. Very good.

And speaking of facing challenges and catching a vision, I am intrigued by the “dedication” in Bart Kosko’s Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic (Hyperion, 1993). God lurks only in the shadows of Kosko’s book, but his words ring true in a faith context as well: “For the young men and women who stick with their training while their youth calls, it’s hard, it will get harder, but it turns the world.”

For a believer, turning the world at the right time and in the right way requires an abundance of God’s grace. It also means time, energy, patience, and perhaps most of all, courage. And here I will tuck in a story about courage that threads its way in our direction through the lives and words of two Adventists and a Scottish novelist. When it comes to courage, we can help each other.

The story begins with the Scottish novelist and dramatist, J. M. Barrie (1860-1937), the creator of Peter Pan, who delivered an address on “Courage” at the Scottish University of St. Andrews. It was published as a small paperback, one that brought a life-transforming moment into the life of H. M. Tippett, a well-known Adventist teacher, author, and editor of an earlier generation.

Tippett had just received the crushing news that his lifelong dream of earning a doctorate had been denied him, after he had completed all degree requirements, including a dissertation. Deeply depressed, he wandered into a small used-book store in Chicago. After a couple of hours of aimless wandering, he picked up Barrie’s little book and spotted the lines that would rekindle the fire in his soul:

Fight on, my men, said Sir Andrew Barton, I am somewhat hurt, but am not slaine, I’ll lie me down and bleed awhile, And then I’ll rise and fight againe.

Tippett tells the story in the last chapter of his little book, Who Waits in Faith (RH, 1951). Milton Murray, a former (lackluster!) student of Tippett’s at Andrews University (Emmanuel Missionary College), but who had since matured, bought the book, “determined to make up for misspent opportunities,” as Murray put it. Destined to become the leading light in the development of Adventist philanthropic endeavors, Murray discovered Tippett’s version of the story and drew strength from it, not just once, but many times: “An administrative decision that blocked a given program was no problem — I just read ‘To Bleed Awhile. . . ’ When budgets were slashed, my secret weapon was H. M. Tippett’s chapter on bleeding!”

I heard all this from Murray in 1997 when he attended the Sabbath school class I was teaching. He told the story and gave me a copy of Tippett’s book, along with a two-chapter version he had distributed when he was in church work. I cherish the Post-It note he put inside the front cover: “We gave these chapters to hundreds of young people who always seemed to have itchy feet and little patience.”

Are you suffering from “itchy feet and little patience”? Just lie down and bleed awhile — then rise to fight again! The church needs you and so does the world. And if by God’s grace you do rise to fight again, old, impatient Adventists who still live in hope will rise up and call you blessed.

Alden Thompson, Ph.D., teaches religion at Walla Walla University, College Place, Washington

pp.20,21 adventist today | vol. 15 issue 4