Chapter 8
THE BEGINNING OF THE LORD'S RECOVERY IN TEXAS PART 2: ODESSA, WACO, AND DENTON
Odessa
AT THE SAME TIME THE LORD WAS MOVING IN TYLER AND PLAINVIEW, a similar work was taking place in Odessa among a small cluster of brothers who had come into contact with Watchman Nee’s ministry. Two brothers in a Baptist denomination—Clyde Overton and Bobby Snedegar—had been reading and enjoying every Nee title they could find. Overton had become acquainted with Gene Edwards, who, in 1963, connected him to Witness Lee.
In 1952, a brother named Francis Ball moved to Odessa for a job with Shell Pipeline. Brother Francis had left his Baptist background to meet with the Brethren and served as a responsible brother with the Odessa Bible Chapel. In 1961, a brother meeting with the Brethren introduced Ball to Major Ian Thomas’s book, The Saving Life of Christ.
At a Brethren young people’s camp in New Mexico, Ball met a Brethren worker named Don Archibald. Archibald had heard Brother Lee speak in California and had brought back a copy of The Stream magazine, which he shared with Ball. Around the same time, a brother named Jim Hunt shared his copy of The Normal Christian Life with Ball. It impacted him deeply.
In 1963, Clyde Overton traveled to Tyler to hear Witness Lee speak. Upon returning to Odessa, he began to inquire whether anyone in the city was taking the way of the church as revealed in the Bible. Through this search he came into contact with Francis Ball and concluded that the Odessa Bible Chapel was the group closest to a genuine church. Overton, Ball, and at least one other brother began to coordinate to take the lead in caring for the Bible Chapel, realizing, at the same time, that the group needed to move further in the direction of becoming a genuine expression of the church in their locality.
Overton brought recordings of Brother Lee’s messages back to Odessa to share with the group. Ball later recounted, “My family wasn’t happy hearing Brother Lee, so usually I played a tape late at night or while I worked on something like painting a room in the house. I would take the tape recorder and listen to Brother Lee while I painted, and I was so enthralled with what I heard that sometimes the paint dripped down off my elbow without my knowledge.”
Eventually, Overton invited Brother Lee to visit Odessa, which he did in April of 1964. After Lee’s visit, Ball traveled to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to visit a small group of brothers and sisters who were meeting as the church in Albuquerque. During his stay, Ball did not visit the Brethren congregation there. This alarmed the Brethren leaders and prompted significant opposition from Brethren quarters. Ball later testified,
“After my visit to Albuquerque, a lot of opposition was stirred up from different parts—not only from that part of the country but from the whole world…One [form of opposition came] through a brother I knew quite well with the Brethren. [He] was a young speaking brother among the Brethren. We loved each other. He heard something about Witness Lee coming our way. [He] came out in early 1964, expecting to be there when Brother Lee was there, to intercept him and “get me straightened out…” He missed Brother Lee at that time, but when Brother Lee went to Houston later, [he] followed him around and took notes and opposed him. He even wrote a letter in the Letters of Interest, a Brethren publication in Chicago, and it was sent out all over, warning people against Witness Lee’s teaching concerning the church…It had its effect. It had its effect on me, too, because I really appreciated these brothers.”
—Francis Ball, Higher Ground
Over the following months the opposition intensified around Ball, worst of all from his own family. Word spread that he was taking the inner-life way, like that of T. Austin-Sparks, whom the Brethren strongly disapproved of. Ball continued to receive letters and visits from Brethren leaders attempting to sway him.
Several of the couples meeting with the Odessa Bible Chapel left to meet as the church in Odessa. Ball expressed to them that he agreed with the way they were taking, but felt that he was not yet ready to take it himself.
A period of intense inward turmoil ensued for Brother Francis. Although he felt he lacked the strength to pay the price to take the way of the Lord’s recovery, he continually felt the Lord calling him. One morning, he read Hebrews 6:4-6:
“For it is impossible for those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and yet have fallen away, to renew themselves again unto repentance.”
—Hebrews 6:4-6, The Recovery Version of the Bible
He knew he had to be faithful to what he had seen and tasted.
Clyde Overton and Don Archibald convinced Ball to come to the summer conference and training in Los Angeles. In spite of considerable financial difficulty, Ball agreed, and stayed in L.A. for one week. During his time there, he felt the Lord confirm everything he had seen and tasted. Karl Hammond, the brother from Whittier, California, who had published his own edition of The Normal Christian Church Life, invited Ball to lunch and cautioned him “not to take everything, to be careful.” Hammond had remained friendly towards Witness Lee and the church in L.A. but never dropped his strong personal views. Despite the warning, Ball later testified that Hammond’s words “didn’t stick…The Lord just covered me, I don’t know how.”
Ultimately, the price revealed itself as Ball returned from L.A. to an empty home in Odessa. His wife had left with their children. She had not been happy with his meeting with the brothers or with his private attempts to listen to ministry tapes. Ball attempted to reconcile, but she refused. At last, Ball left Odessa Bible Chapel and joined the brothers who were meeting in Odessa. A short time later, he moved to Los Angeles and became a deacon in the church there.
Waco
Rodney Philips, one of the students who met with James Barber, had a brother named Benson. He had been a senior at Wayland Baptist when Barber was hired to head up the Student Union. Benson Phillips had been friendly toward Barber and received from him several titles by Watchman Nee, but remained a committed Baptist.
In January of 1964, Benson Phillips enrolled in Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. In the following months, he observed as various students he knew from Plainview, including his brother, Rodney, left the denominations to begin meeting as the church. Later that year, Witness Lee visited Dallas to speak to a local congregation. Barber drove in from Plainview. Benson Phillips attended two of the meetings. Brother Lee spoke about the church based on Romans 12:
“In 1964, I was invited to speak to a certain group in Dallas. My hosts, who appreciated my ministry, were very kind to me. However, they told me, both in plain words and by suggestions, that the people in Dallas were not ready to hear about the church. They said, ‘Brother Lee, please sympathize with us and do not say a word about the church.’ I did not promise to comply with their request. Rather, I said, ‘I fully realize the situation. But I assure you that the more I talk about Christ and minister Christ as life to people, the more they will desire to have the church. Even if I do not say a word about the church and only minister Christ as life, they will still have the desire for the church.’ In the last meeting, I was burdened to speak a word about the church. When I stood up and asked the people to read Romans 12, they were disappointed. But I said to myself, ‘I don’t care whether I offend you or not. If I do not release my burden, I cannot live.’ I then gave a strong word concerning the church, and they were offended by it. Later, I learned that a certain brother, who had not yet come into the church life, had attended that last meeting. Many had been praying for him. During that meeting…he was caught for the church life. Although I had offended those people, the Lord gained this brother. Today, this brother has become a pillar.”
—Life-study of Genesis, Message 82
That brother was Benson Phillips. He was convinced that the way of the Lord’s recovery was of the Lord and decided to move to Plainview to meet with the church there. That summer, he drove to L.A. for the 1964 conference and training in Los Angeles. Along the way, he visited his parents and told them that he was leaving the Southern Baptist denomination to enter into the church life in the Lord’s recovery. His parents wept.
Speaking of his father, Philips recounted, “If he would have just reacted and given me a hard time, it would have been easier, but instead he just silently wept, which was hard for me to take…But I knew within me that I had no choice.”
After the summer conference and training in Los Angeles, a sister and a young couple from Texas, who had been captured for the Lord’s recovery in L.A., moved to Waco, Texas. Benson Phillips returned to Plainview with some feeling before the Lord to move to Waco to join them. However, he later said, “I decided I would not move there unless the church in Plainview agreed with me. I said to myself, ‘I will not go to Waco unless every brother and sister in Plainview has the same feeling that this is of the Lord.’ There was one Plainview sister who couldn’t get clear about whether I should go to Waco or not. I waited until that one sister was clear, which was some days later. Then I moved there in November, 1964.”
The four brothers and sisters began to break bread as the church in Waco in January, 1965.
Denton
In January of 1966, a brother named Thurman Massey moved to Denton, Texas, to attend college. Massey had attended conference meetings in the church in Los Angeles and had a desire to take the way of the Lord’s recovery. While seeking for a place to meet, he came into contact with a young pastor named George Whitington, who was leading an “interdenominational” church called the Church of the Resurrection and attempting to practice the church life as described in the book of Acts.
Through Massey, George Whitington was brought into fellowship with the brothers in Plainview and Waco and later attended the summer conference and training in L.A., where he expressed to Witness Lee his desire to take the way of the Lord’s recovery. The dilemma was that many in his congregation would be unhappy with such a change. Whitington later testified of Brother Lee’s response:
“He said, ‘Don’t change anything. Just go back and minister Christ, especially out of the books that you have seen emphasized here [in the conference]: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians—the heart of the New Testament. If you minister Christ, the church will come out, just as Eve came out of Adam.’”
—George Whitington, Higher Ground
During the drive back to Denton, George Whitington and Thurman Massey prayed for the Lord’s covering and leading regarding how to go on. Whitington took Brother Lee’s advice not to change anything for the time being, but simply to minister Christ according to what he had received through the ministry:
“The ‘Church of the Resurrection’ sign was still in the front yard, and we still had the little chapel. I still spoke, but I did try to speak from the things of the ministry which I had received. One Sunday morning in January, 1967, some brothers came to me and said, ‘If we want to just be the church, why should we still have that sign in the yard?’ I told them, ‘I’m just waiting on you.’ So immediately we went out and shook it out of the ground…Later we also removed the pulpit and set up the chairs in a non-clergy-laity arrangement. That was the end of the ‘Church of the Resurrection’ and the real beginning of the church in Denton.”
—George Whitington, Higher Ground
Texas and Los Angeles
From 1964 onward, traffic and fellowship between the churches in Texas and the church in Los Angeles brought mutual strengthening and encouragement. Texas would become another region in the United States where a strong, flourishing testimony of the Lord’s recovery was established, with a steady rate of increase, the steady spreading of lampstands, and the strong one accord with the ministry and churches in the Lord’s recovery.
