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The Layman’s Challenge and Legacy of Love
April 13th, 2007 | 18 Comments 
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by Keith McCallum
A Strange Missionary
“Victorious Love Output” was a corny term we first encountered in 1974. I was not quite an adult, and like most others my age, I suffered from Emotional Turmoil Disease (ETD), which nobody dared understand — “Just let him grow him out of it,” people whispered. I was intimidating and street-wise. Or so I thought, but maybe I was just exasperating. Covered with acne, I weighed 120 pounds and carried a scraggly, flopping mop on my head called a “Freak Flag”, and I looked dirty and degenerate like most hippie-wannabes back then.
I was also blessed with a fanatic Christian mom who often compelled me to attend The Christian Thing no matter how much I hated it. When she dragged me to hear this medical missionary she dug up from Cedarville, Ohio, I plopped down in the front row to growl, glower and inflict my misery on him.
But Dr. Ankenman was oblivious to the sour-faced kid sitting in front. He was upbeat and chuckled at his own jokes, but these were not antics. Ankenman was genuinely excited about something he called Victorious Love Output, and it was contagious. His stories about working with the “Criminally Insane” psychopaths at Lima State Hospital and other strange patients were spellbinding. More intriguing were the results: he steered the hopeless towards hope through emotional healing.
A Grace Awakening
Those were heady days. This amazing Christian fellowship known today as “Xenos” suddenly materialized out of thin air.
Xenos was hatched in an obscure nest called “Layman’s Challenge for Today,” which in-turn arose from a miraculous chain of happenstance triggered by tragedy. It was the tragic division in a local United Methodist church when a well-trained liberal minister arrived with radical curriculum and a radical agenda to oust the growing pocket of evangelicals gathering there. He neatly divided those who believed in the veracity of the Bible against those who believed in the authority of the Methodist Bishopric (or simply, the “B-Pric”). Dazed and bewildered, the believers in veracity left that church not knowing where to go, but they soon discovered they weren’t alone. There were many such Christians and spiritual seekers drifting away from their traditional church moorings which had become liberal and devoid of spiritual power. People were leaving in droves across the nation quite simply because the Liberal Church was boring and dead.
Coincidentally, some Campus Crusade for Christ leaders left their organization not knowing where to go. They were young and visionary men, drawn to the “Jesus Freak” movement spreading from the West coast and filling socially-liberal pockets like OSU. These ex-Crusaders were dismayed at the growing population of Hippies who were finding and loving the freedom of Jesus Christ, but could find no church to attend! Traditional churches would never welcome these misfits in such numbers.
These evangelical ex-Methodists and visionary ex-Crusaders found common cause, and with their respective followings, “LCT” was born. The alliance promised a unique combination.
At first LCT was a simple Bible study for equipping about 100 “laymen” on Tuesday nights, like Xenos Central Teachings today. But then some OSU students wanted the same Bible study on campus. They formed “The Fish House,” which was actually a Christian rooming house, or what we call a ministry house.
More Bible studies started in different parts of the city and then at Whetstone High School, new teachers arose, and the groups grew. People from all ages were excited by the freshness of a relationship with Jesus Christ without the institutional trappings.
What fueled the commotion was the clear, biblical message of grace. Few churches taught grace so powerfully. Those ex-Crusaders were Dallas Seminary grads, and they brought more Dallas alumni into Columbus—several of whom later became national authors and luminaries, like Hal Lindsay. This group of Dallas grads imparted a sound framework of grace that still characterizes Xenos. We studied grace, talked grace, and loved grace. It was a “Grace Awakening,” as one writer coined the term.
But the Grace Awakening had problems. People found a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through grace—and lots of people did—but sanctification was not well-understood. We knew aboutIdentity Truths and “walking by grace,” but questions remained: how did this new Christian identity look and act? It meant holiness we knew, but holiness as many Christians discover can be confusing. It means becoming more “Christ-like,” everyone agrees. But many Christians foolishly build arbitrary and strict rules to get sanctified, which only ends in frustration, guilt, and failure. The uncertainty grew more desperate as many people in those days began drifting back into unhealthy and damaging lifestyles.
The Love Therapist
“The key to emotional health is Victorious Love Output,” was Dr. Ankenman’s repeated theme. He began lecturing at LCT during this crucial, uncertain time and appeared from nowhere. He was spotted during a panel discussion on parenting, and he stood out with his clear-headed, practical insights on relationships. A few LCT leaders drove to his home in a remote country town and asked him to teach at LCT, and surprisingly it was an opportunity he readily accepted because he was driving to Columbus every week anyway to finish his degree in psychiatry.
Ankenman launched into a three-year period of weekly lectures and counseling for us in Columbus. His presentations were more lively than organized, but they were well-attended and deeply impacted us. Unwittingly, he played a vital role forging the unique character of this fellowship and filled a significant gap in our biblical understanding.
What he called Love Therapy never caught on in secular psychology, even though Dr. Ankenman was a brilliant psychiatrist with a long, proven track record. His life was a long preparation by God in the mechanics of Love Therapy. As a younger Christian he was burdened with the plight of the poor, and after medical school he worked in Pittsburgh’s inner city. Then he launched a 15-year stint in Bangladesh, one of the most impoverished nations on earth. During typhoon season this low-lying country becomes a vast, disease-ridden flood zone.
The intensity of suffering and poverty in Bangladesh takes quantum leaps beyond our inner cities, and Ankenman went there thinking he would find and help the most helpless souls on earth. He was surprised at what he discovered. These people were more capable of rebounding from heartbreaking tragedies and loss, while in America his patients kept returning and never seemed to improve. By the time he returned to the states 15 years later he was both biblically and practically prepared with the answers he taught at LCT.
What made Bangladesh so much more healthy than America?
Related posts:
- The Legacy
- Discussing and Studying a Love Ethic
- The Power of Love
- Building a Love Ethic
- The New Life in Love Ethics
18 Responses to "The Layman’s Challenge and Legacy of Love"
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Suffering makes Bangladesh more healthy than America; in America we do not accept suffering as a way of life – in Bangladesh they must. We seek – always seeking a way out of discomfort – let alone suffering.
Paul has a lot to say about the merits of suffering in Romans 5:3-5 Amplified Bible
Moreover [let us also be full of joy now!] let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance. And endurance (fortitude) develops maturity of character (approved faith and tried integrity). And character [of this sort] produces [the habit of] joyful and confident hope of eternal salvation. Such hope never disappoints or deludes or shames us, for God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us.
So in Bangladesh they know that they are powerless to help themselves out of this discomfort and suffering – in America we seek after every enticement, every drug, every experience to dull our suffering. Without suffering – even embracing our suffering, we can never develop patience endurance, never mature in character, perhaps never experience joy in our eternal hope. How bleak!
We are desperately sick in this country and no advancement in medicine, technology or psychiatry will make us well. We need to be willing to endure suffering to be made well.
I agree with Lisa but I think there is more. I am thinking of the Sermon on the Mount. When a person has to face his need everyday, when there is no choice but to grapple with it constantly because it is all he has, there is so much more room for God to work. Imagine a person standing and truly realizing “I am nothing”, what a vessel for the Lord to fill!!! We in the U.S. spend so much time NOT looking at our need, or finding other ways to fill it that we must frustrate the H*** out of God. How can I hunger and thirst for righteousness until I recognize that without it, I am a pointless, hopeless shell? Suffering plays a huge part(depending on response) but we have all known those who have suffered and grown bitter.
Ah! Well, you guys are definitely correct in regards to the way the Lord can use suffering to break the “outer man” as Paul describes it in 2 Cor. 4. You’re also very correct Lisa about our superficial search for reprieve in this country.
However, there’s a big snafu perhaps we forgot…Bangladesh is a Hindu country, and in general we’re not dealing with Christians here or Christian theology. The promises regarding suffering apply to a Christian with the “outer man” and “inner man” of new life–not a non-Christian! Suffering without Jesus as Lord is truly not so redemptive… See, for example, Romans 8:28, which has an important condition attached.
No, there’s actually a very interesting answer to this conundrum which I hope to post this week…
Hmmm…I see your point.
Let me take another stab at this… I love a good challenge.
Hinduism has the concept of karma (or the deeds we do). So, as a Hindu I reap the effects of how I chose to live. Thus, if I live an “evil” life, bad things should come my way – a “good” life means good things should come my way.
Therefore, as the karma concept in Hindi may involve reincarnation, a present life of suffering may be necessary to “redeem” oneself from a past life of evil. Good and evil are weighed on a scale and one must tip the balance in favor of a good life. Therefore, if I am suffering all sorts of calamity and distress, it is for the better. I willing endure suffering so that I will earn the reward of completing the cycle of nirvana or unity with God.
I, as a Hindi, am also more willing to serve others and do good to them no matter what my circumstances. I do these things as I am attempting to earn “fruit” towards tipping the scales of karma toward nirvana rather than to continuing samsara (the cycle of death/rebirth).
Perhaps this is why the people of Bangladesh are more able to heal from adversity and have positive mental outlooks. Perhaps that “victorious love output”mentioned in the article is the attitude of loving others no matter what your circumstances-serving no matter how little you have to give-because in Bangladesh doing good is your way out of a living hell. This has the familiar ring of servanthood to it! Hmmm….
It is strange to note that as a Christian Christ pays the price for our wrongs while in Bangladesh a man must pay for the price of hisown sin continually until a balance in favor of the good over the bad works is reached.
Praise be to Christ for saving me from such a life.
Lisa, one thing’s for sure: your acuity is of the highest aplomb! I love it! And yes, I would agree, the name of Jesus Christ deserves the highest praise for saving us from such a terrible, fate-filled life!
Your answer is so seemingly tenable, yet belies a victorious emotional life. The resignation and passivity of eastern mysticism — not to mention its ascetic withdrawal from the interpersonal world — is precisely the opposite of a victorious love life. Hopefully you’re more assertive with Steve! (Did I really need to say that?)
Besides, the average Hindu like the average “Christian” in the West barely understands or practices the tenants of their religion beyond the obligatory ceremonies. Your description befits a Buddhist monk, perhaps, not the squalidity of commoners.
We’re about to publish the second part of the series, so let me reward your efforts (which deserve better still!): the variance is in the family life. Such traditional, older cultures we derisively label ”Third World” (as if they were “third-rate” to the “Industrialized World”) are not so handicapped. Research from our own scientists can be rattling. America is among the world leaders in suicides, broken homes, murders and violent crime, sexual abuse and just about any other sociological measure of health you might choose.
I await with bated breath.
The following article seems to indicate that not all involved with the Jesus Freak movement “grew out of it”. It’s interesting reading…
http://www.slate.com/id/2171430/?GT1=10346
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The Bangladeshi people; like many other Eastern peoples have a pantheistic worldview. They believe God is responsible for all things even peoples actions. Their view on life is very fatalistic and everything no matter how horrible is deemed as The Will of God.
Yes Mike, it’s true that Hinduism holds a rather savage view towards suffering, and there are many other evil principles found in the core creeds of this inhumane religion.
However, what Ankenman found remarkable is how families in the Third World (irrespective of their religious tenants) were emotionally healthier than the Americans he treated. Statistics from the World Health Organization support his findings.
This proves there is something about Third World (traditional) cultures which is superior to our American secular & humanistic culture, at some levels: certainly for emotional issues, Americans lead the pack, by all measures.
I must say the U.S.A. Religion of the Almighty Dollar is savage and fatalistic like many other barbaric religions.
A Rabbit Trail:
Dollarism is obviously something the rest of the non-’third world’ countries are now familiar with in light of the worldwide economic crunch everyone is seeing right now (Sunday, October 26, 2008). The “uncertainty of riches” should be more real to people than ever. But the tenacity of the human race to keep hopes alive apart from God is amazing.
The epitomy of Dollarism is probably the King Abdulla City in Saudi Arabia http://www.kingabdullahcity.com/en/ . Does anyone know if this city is actually being built on sand? If so, how ironic!
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