13. Where Shall We
Go?
AS SOON AS TEACHER had hung up her hat and put her Bible down on her desk in her office at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, she started looking around for a place to which she could take the young people from her church for their summer conferences. Even as Grandfather Everts was famed for his characteristic cry of "Give me this mountain!" now his granddaughter started looking around for a mountain that she could possess.
The first summer treks that she organized were in 1929 and 1930, when they went to Switzer's camp. It was a four-mile hike from the road into the camp high in the mountains, and Miss Mears hiked it with the rest of them the first time; after that she rode, majestically, astride a pack mule. But with her spirit of gaiety and enthusiasm it became an unforgettable experience. About 125 college young people comprised the conferences at Switzer's camp, Miss Mears being the only adult. She did the cooking, cleaning, counseling and challenging. It was the original "C.C.C." camp." But even while conducting a conference, Teacher never neglected her responsibility to her charges "down below," and she would always return for the midweek college prayer meeting at church.
It was an early morning in the first conference, 3 A.M. to be exact. With all the exuberance and hilarity of youth, a great deal of noise was coming from one of the cabins occupied by the fellows. No one likes fun more than Teacher, but not at a time when she knew that all of them should be getting their rest. It was time to end the noise.
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Teacher has always had a versatile voice. It can range from soft, sweet, gentle, persuasive tones to thundering, stentorian syllables that cut straight through the granite of an uncompromising situation. She can be charming and gracious in a drawing room but can march heedlessly, fearlessly, and dramatically into any situation that needs quelling. Now, in the darkness preceding the dawn, she marched through the darkness to the boys' cabin with a red leather coat covering her pink nightgown. Suddenly her penetrating voice cut through the hilarity. "Boys! If I hear another sound from any of you, you will all leave camp first thing in the morning. You need your rest and we all need our rest. Now there is to be absolute silence!"
Absolute silence ensued. Satisfied, she headed back to her cabin. She thought she heard a slight, shuffling noise, but not a voice was raised. Some time later, one of the more courageous young men, Bob Ferguson, now a successful minister in Sacramento, described the scene. "Teacher, you never knew that night at Switzer's what the situation was inside the cabin when you told us to be quiet. Mattresses and boys were sandwiched to the ceiling: a mattress and a boy, a mattress and a boy, a mattress and a boy. When you told us not to make another sound we were practically smothering and you'll never know the valiant struggle that took place to get those mattresses and boys unstacked from ceiling to floor level with no noise. But we knew you meant what you said, and none of us wanted to go home the next day!"
Through the years it has been one of Teacher's greatest jokes, and she shrieks with delight whenever she thinks of it. "All I know," she says, "is that there were a lot of good ministers smashed between mattresses that night, for every single one of them went on to seminary. I don't know why it is, but it seems the most incorrigible boys make the best ministers." Another laugh. "Just think of it, there I stood saying, 'Boys, not another sound!' and I never realized I was asking for a human impossibility. But there was no sound!"
They made round-trip caravans to go to conferences at Mount Hermon conference center in northern California, a distance of nine hundred miles round-trip from Los Angeles. Dave Cowie, the College Department president at that time, said, "I arranged enough transportation to take one person around the world four times!" Another place they went to for conferences was closer to home, a little dust bowl of a camp out in San Dimas, in an orange grove. Little cabins perched precariously in the sand, movable, so the arrangement was never permanent.
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"Our spiritual foundations had to be very secure, because our cabins certainly weren't!" said Teacher with a rueful smile of remembrance. The dining room leaked like a sieve, the kitchen was dilapidated, but at least there was an outdoor victory circle and the young people were together in Christian fellowship, and that's all that really mattered. At least until the floods came. In 1936 they could hear the roar of the flood waters as they raced around them. Miss Mears and Mother Atwater prayed all night that the camp would be spared. As they prayed they had no idea how serious the flood was, nor how close it came. The flood waters swept around them on both sides and they escaped, but there was high water standing throughout the camp through which they had to drive the cars to ferry the campers from their cabins to the dining hall.
But no matter what the physical conditions, the Lord was there and the Holy Spirit was present and there were many who made decisions for Christ. Whatever the circumstances, the Lord can bless a conference if the spirit is right. It's the message that counts. Dr. Donald W. Cole, president of the California Baptist Theological Seminary, writes: "I remember a fireside devotion at Camp Radford during my senior year in high school. Miss Mears told what has since become a familiar story to those of us who have known her: the story of the old red barn that went unnoticed for countless years until it one day caught on fire. I will never forget how her forceful presentation of that illustration was used by God's Holy Spirit to cause me to sob out a request to Him that He set me on fire so that all men might notice His love, glow, warmth, and light in my life. She was a good example herself of a 'barn on fire' for God . . . . The second aspect of her life's influence upon mine is the very familiar way in which she emphasized to all of us young people the necessity for a full, complete and well-rounded education if we were to do great things in a great world for a great God. The exuberance and enthusiasm which was engendered in us through the summer conference programs often made the long and arduous task of formal education seem foreign to the plan of God for our lives. Her shrewd insight into human nature sensed this trend in our thinking, and therefore she always followed our conference season with heavy emphasis upon thorough preparation to be adequately prepared for the service of our Lord. I thank God from the bottom of my heart for this sound counsel from one of His own . . . I don't know if the foregoing observations will prove of any help to you as you seek to portray the life of our beloved Henrietta Mears, but I can
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assure you that it has warmed my heart just to review briefly these two aspects of her life's influence upon mine."
Teacher wanted to find a conference grounds that would be close to Los Angeles, in the mountains, yet accessible by car, so that she could plan conferences for every age group in the church instead of having to limit the conference week to the young people of college age.
She began to travel all over southern California to see if she could by any miracle find the right place. Dave Cowie, Ethel May and Sy Nelson traveled with her. It was the depths of the depression and everything was either too run down or exorbitant in price. But after much searching they found Forest Home, located in the San Bernardino mountains just east of Redlands. It had been the fashionable resort area before Arrowhead was developed. It seemed fantastic to think of procuring it for a conference center but the owner was in ill health and wanted to dispose of it, and in the spring of 1938 a great flood came through the canyon. A twenty-foot wall of water swept everything before it — rocks, trees, houses — but it left Forest Home virtually untouched.
Miss Mears was ready to leave on a world tour, but when it appeared to be possible to obtain Forest Home, Teacher and Dave Cowie, who was also planning to go on the tour, cancelled their trip, stayed home, and put their "travel money" into financing Forest Home. They were joined in the financial underwriting by Mr. John Hormel, Dr. Stuart P. MacLennan and Mr. William Irwin. Finally, Forest Home belonged to the young people for their conferences. Miss Mears could plan conferences all year 'round: winter snow retreats, Easter vacations, summer conference programs, that would go from early spring to late summer.
While the original setup at Forest Home seemed very elegant and tremendous at the time of purchase, soon the buildings were outgrown by the enthusiastic and "different" program at Forest Home. Beautiful new buildings have been added through the years — dormitories, auditoriums, dining rooms. It is supported by everything from the steady flow of nickels that pour in from the junior campers to memorial gifts that are sufficient to build complete buildings. The junior nickels cost six cents in postage to mail, but the idea of giving is taking root in their hearts and they feel that they too are "building for God," and that is the important thing.
Like a gem in the pine-crested mountain slope is the Cook Memorial
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Prayer Chapel, and huge and majestic is the Hormel Auditorium. There is the Marybelle Reed Memorial Clinic, a true witness to the work of Forest Home, for Marybelle died in early youth but her decision for Christ and for a consecrated life was found recorded in the "Decision Book" on the desk in the Prayer Chapel. At Lakeview is the Harry Wetzell Memorial Lodge, mirrored in beauty and dignity in the lake that curves around it.
Whenever Miss Mears walked over the land of Forest Home's 750 acres she remembered the promise that God had given Joshua: "Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto . . . " So Miss Mears continually claimed the mountain for God. In July 1955, the new dining hall was opened and dedicated. It had a seating capacity of a thousand, which replaced the old dining room that held only 250. At that time the Chamber of Commerce of Millcreek Canyon, the Valley of the Falls in which Forest Home is located, was having a dinner there. The speaker, Bob Ringer, who had attended many Forest Home conferences with his family, described how Miss Mears had walked over the grounds of Forest Home, claiming the promise God made to Joshua and he concluded, "You folks can feel mighty lucky that she didn't walk on your land!"
There are conferences for every age group from juniors, junior high, high school, college, young adult, family, leadership training, college briefing, Hollywood Christian Retreat, plus an infinite number of groups that come up from individual churches for their own private conferences. Forest Home, from the very beginning, did not belong to any one church or any one denomination. Through the years it has been open to all, interdenominational, and over 26,000 people come annually to the various conferences. On the original board were Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and Missionary Covenant. Miss Mears' purpose, originally, was to provide only for her own young people, but then young pastors who had formerly attended Hollywood Presbyterian Church called and asked if they could bring their young people to the conferences, and so it grew. Miss Mears had a vision large enough to encompass all, and Forest Home became ecumenical in a very practical way, bringing representatives from scores of denominations together at the same time to have a mutual and simultaneous experience with the living God.
When Governor Langlie of Washington first saw Forest Home he was so enthused that he told his audience, "I'm so thrilled to overflowing
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at the inspiration of this place that I just feel like kissing the woman who is responsible for it!"
"Go ahead!" shouted the enthusiastic audience.
And he did, on both cheeks.
Her close friend, Helen Bustard writes, "I was with her when she went up into the San Bernardino Mountains to look over what was then a resort. She had to have it for youth conferences, and that was that! But though it seemed fantastic to those of us with her, we discovered that when Henrietta Mears wants something for youth, she never gives up!"
Of course the true accomplishment of a God-given conference center is not in buildings or beautiful scenery or better accommodations but in the work of the Holy Spirit in individual hearts. Miss Mears' whole aim in providing the buildings is merely to have an atmosphere which will accommodate more hearts in which the Holy Spirit can work. Forest Home is not called a place by those who love it; rather it is called a heart experience.
To help this heart experience, the faggot fire has always been a part of Forest Home. At the end of each conference the campers put a faggot on the fire to represent the Christian decision they have made as committed to the fire of the Holy Spirit.
Jim Rayburn, director of Young Life Campaign, writes: "As a young man just out of college and beginning to work among young people, I heard of Henrietta Mears' ministry at Hollywood Presbyterian Church and particularly at Forest Home. What I heard, chiefly her continual exaltation of the Person and work of Christ, her emphasis of a personal conversion experience, and a vital and dedicated relationship to Him in the Christian walk, these things were so impressive that I tried to incorporate into my work everything I heard about her way of doing things. For example, in my first young people's camps over twenty years ago I had 'faggot services' solely because Miss Mears did. I knew it was right, if she did it. Through this influence upon my life she has had a great deal to do with shaping the progress and ministry of the Young Life Campaign."
At each faggot service, the Book of Remembrance is signed by each person after he has placed his faggot on the fire and given his decision. Thousands of campers can trace their spiritual histories by the signatures through the years in the "Book of Remembrance."
Though all aspects of the conferences at Forest Home are minutely and infinitely planned to be letter-perfect in every detail, still the program
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is kept fluid to the guiding presence of the Holy Spirit during each conference. Daily faculty meetings are mandatory for the conference speakers; the program is changed on the spot if, through prayer and seeking God's will, it seems that a change in program will help the work of the Spirit.
From Moody Bible Institute in Chicago comes this letter: "Is there anyone in this wide world who, when she enters a room, can be felt in every corner as Henrietta Mears? I recall with a deep sense of joy the first time we were privileged to take part in a Forest Home conference. When Miss Mears arrived on the grounds she called a prayer meeting of the faculty in her own living room. We had already sensed the presence of the Lord on the grounds, but when she prayed, she lifted us all into the very presence of God. There was a surge of urgency concerning the Kingdom's business that overshadowed even one's strong desire to serve aright. Our hearts were thrilled, they were touched; yes, they reached the bursting point."
In 1946 Miss Mears was walking over an undeveloped part of Forest Home with Lowell Buerge, who was the camp manager, and his wife Ruth. As they walked, Miss Mears waved a hand here and there. "Here I see a lodge, and a lake here, and beautiful cabins with large plate-glass windows looking out toward the beautiful vistas of mountains," she said. If you weren't familiar with the faith of Miss Mears you would have seen only scrubby apple trees, rock, and uneven ground. But a few years later, with faith, fact and fancy woven together with good hard work, everything was complete. By 1948 the cabins were built and the lake was in — named Mears Lake, and rightly so. By 1952 the lodge was completed.
When the lodge was first begun it was decided that Forest Home would build only as they had the money given for their needs, yet complete plans were drawn for the lodge. When it came time to pour the concrete slabs for the floor it was decided that only one-third of the lodge would be built and the rest added when more funds were available. But Miss Mears felt that the slab floor should be laid for the whole building. It was pointed out to her that when the floor was poured in concrete, the plumbing fixtures would have to installed at the same time, so not only would there be a slab floor extending out over the area but plumbing fixtures sticking up into the air as well. But she was determined in her thinking: she wanted the entire slab floor laid, plumbing fixtures and all, for, "It would be a shame if the Lord decided to finished the lodge and we didn't have the foundation
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ready!" she said. So the remainder of the slab concrete floor was laid and it spread out obviously and enormously on the crest of the hill with plumbing pipes sticking up at awkward angles against the mountain sky.
Miss Mears again sought the Lord in prayer, and reminded Him that it was His lodge. It was dedicated to His glory, and if He wanted the lodge finished it was just up to Him. She committed it all into His hands. The telephone rang. It was Ethel May and Teacher announced in triumph, "I'm not worried about the lodge any more. It is in the Lord's hands, concrete slab, plumbing pipes and all."
"Good!" piped up Ethel May. "The money has been given to pay completely for the entire lodge."
"What do you mean?" gasped Teacher. It is one of her favorite expressions. She knows what you mean but she loves to hear the good news repeated. If it is something she doesn't want to hear, then she asks the question hoping you will change the facts or just go away. "I was just this minute on my knees giving the whole thing over to the Lord."
"Well, He's giving it right back to you," laughed Ethel May.
As quickly as the walls of Jericho had fallen down, Teacher was seeing the walls of the lodge going up. She said, "I knew all the time the Lord never intended to leave those old plumbing pipes sticking out against the sky. They spoiled His sunsets."
Shortly after the new lodge was completed, a Navy jet plane crashed into the mountain about one hundred yards from the lodge, thankfully the pilot parachuting to safety. Everyone at Forest Home was so grateful that the lodge had been spared and that it hadn't been in the path of the twenty-acre fire that burned around it after the accident. "What a horrible thing," said one. "Thank God the lodge was spared!" said another. But not Miss Mears! Here's what she said.
"Isn't it wonderful!" said she. "We've been planning to build cabins on that very spot. Now the whole twenty acres is cleared and the plane that crashed has already dug the basement for the first cabin!"
In 1947 Miss Mears received the most vital and vibrant vision of the world's needs of her entire life. She and her sister, Margaret had gone to South America to spend the winter; their passports limited them to South America, as European travel was restricted and they had no thought of a trip to Europe. Yet they realized that some American leaders were traveling through Europe, and Margaret saw no reason
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why Henrietta should not have the privilege. So, at her instigation, they called on the American ambassador in Rio de Janeiro. Teacher explained to him that over seven hundred young men from her church had been in military service and she was hoping that she might go and see at first hand the conditions in Europe so she would be better qualified to counsel spiritually the young people in her church on the subject of world conditions.
When they returned the next day, they asked the secretary in his office if the permission had been granted. The secretary replied, "I think it has, but you can go right in and talk with him. He was on the telephone all yesterday afternoon and all I could hear was 'Mears, Mears, Mears!' " Permission was granted and Teacher embarked on the most significant trip of her life. It seemed to her that all the beauty of Europe, with which she had been so familiar, appeared as if it had all been fashioned of sparkling ice palaces and now the ice was all melted down to slush and to the crying needs of the heart-hungry and devastated peoples.
When she returned to Forest Home that summer for the teachers' and leaders' conference, her heart and soul were gripped with the world vision in an overpowering way by the Holy Spirit and she was hardly aware of the words she spoke in her messages; but the results were tremendous and unmistakable. She told her audience at the conference that the world was on fire and as individuals we could do no more than to take our little buckets of water and throw them on the flame; but by uniting together, our buckets or water could become great oceans against the terrible fires of communism, atheism, wars and rumors of wars, men's hearts failing them for fear. She called on her audience to become an army of dedicated young men and women carrying the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that they could be used of God to work a miracle in our community, our nation, and throughout the world.
Dick Halverson, now with International Christian Leadership, Inc., and for ten years Youth Pastor at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, and formerly one of "Teacher's boys," writes: "Although we were not soliciting any special work of the Spirit that evening, He seemed to meet us in special power, and the meeting turned into an unusual period of blessing and spontaneous planning. The senior high school and college conferences were almost entirely planned that night. It was the birth of the College Briefing Conference and the Fellowship of the Burning Heart. The first Briefing Conference that fall was the most
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amazing any of us had ever experienced. Even the veterans like Miss Mears herself, Dave Cowie and Bob Munger did not know how to handle the strong conviction of sin and its resultant confession that gripped the conference day after day. There were tremendous transactions at that conference; it was the beginning of an entirely new wave of young men entering the ministry from Hollywood. It was the beginning of the Hollywood Christian Group."
Of the College Briefing Conference that was born after this great experience during the leadership training conference, Dr. Wilbur M. Smith, Bible professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, made this report for the Sunday School Times of the ninth Briefing Conference: "For the last few years there has been held at Forest Home the most remarkable Christian conference for college students on the North American continent. This College Briefing Conference was founded and is still watched over by that very able servant of God, Dr. Henrietta Mears. The entire week immediately preceding and including Labor Day is devoted to messages from the Word of God, presented by long-tested, gifted, conservative speakers to missions, and to the challenge of the yielded life. In my opinion it is the nearest thing we have today to those influential conferences of college students which assembled at Northfield, Massachusetts, under the quickening leadership of D.L. Moody, in the latter part of the nineteenth century. No one can doubt but that more decisions among college men and women for consecrated living, for missionary service and for the ministry of the Gospel are made annually during this week at Forest Home than in any other regularly scheduled one-week conference in our nation. Among the speakers this year (1956) were Dr. Bob Smith of Bethel College, St. Paul; Dr. Harold John Ockenga of Park Street Church, Boston; David Cowie of the University Presbyterian Church, Seattle; Major Ian Thomas of England. The total number of registrations for the entire week or part of the week, was the largest recorded to date, 987 young men and women, in addition to some hundreds of visitors. Eighty-nine different colleges, universities and seminaries were represented, including a goodly number of schools in the eastern part of the United States. As one would expect, many different denominations were also represented. The College Briefing Conference is conducted on a high level, to appeal to students who are serious in facing problems of the collegiate life of our nation and who long to devote their lives to the things that count."
The conference program is as carefully planned and concentrated
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for a two-day conference as it is for a week's conference. Miss Mears has always brought the finest speakers from all over the world to give the greatest spiritual challenge. In 1948 she had the idea of inviting a young minister, a more or less unknown in church circles, to speak during the college conference at Forest Home. His name was Billy Graham. When she made known her selection, a would-be adviser strongly counseled her not to have him, for Billy was not from an established church and not considered by some as an orthodox voice of the church. But Billy Graham came to Forest Home. No one advises Miss Mears but God.
Billy was having his own doubts. Not about coming to Forest Home, but doubts as to how far he would go with God, or could go for God. He was due in Forest Home on a Sunday night in August. That Sunday morning he had understood that he was to fill the pulpit in a North Hollywood church, but when he arrived at the church he discovered that the regular minister was scheduled to do the preaching. Realizing that there had been a mix-up, Billy drove on up to Forest Home. (Wouldn't that church love to have him now!)
He was early in his arrival at Forest Home, and had several extra hours in which to talk with Miss Mears and plan for the coming week. He told her of the scheduled Los Angeles Crusade that was to follow the conference at Forest Home, and he told her that he was frightened at the prospect and he didn't know why he'd ever allowed himself to get involved in it. Up to then he had never been invited to preach from any large pulpit in the United States. He was overwhelmed at his own temerity in planning such a crusade for Los Angeles.
Later in the day, as Billy walked over the beautiful grounds of the conference center, perhaps he did not realize that it was the most prayed-over ground in Southern California, that every inch had been claimed for God, and that truly the Holy Spirit held sway on that mountain side. Spiritual decisions and climaxes in Christian lives are as natural as breathing the crisp air or feeling the nearness of the stars at night. Spiritual problems are focused and wrestling with the Spirit is inevitable. Billy was having doubts concerning the Bible. He thought he saw apparent contradictions in the Scriptures. As he puts it, "Some things I could not reconcile with my restricted concept of God. When I stood up to preach, the authoritative note so characteristic of all great preachers of the past was lacking." Billy was waging the intellectual battle of his life. He had come to Forest Home to minister
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to the youth and he did not realize the vital way that the Spirit was going to minister to him.
One night as he walked down the trail in the woods, where practically every rock is a prayer rock where a spiritual crisis has been fought and won, and almost every tree has been used as a back-rest for Bible study, Billy was having his duel with his doubts. His soul was caught in a spiritual cross fire. Finally he knelt down in desperation, as almost all have at one time or another during their stay at Forest Home; kneeling before his Bible he said, "Lord, many things in this Book I do not understand. But you have said, 'The just shall live by faith.' All I have received from you I have taken by faith. Here and now, by faith, I accept the Bible as your word. I take it all. I take it without reservations. Where there are things I cannot understand, I will reserve judgment until I receive more light. If this pleases you, give me the authority as I proclaim your word and through that authority, convict me of sin and turn sinners to the Saviour."
He arose from that place of prayer with the firm fact of faith strong in his soul. At his very next meeting with the young people there at the College Briefing Conference, he gave a challenge for life dedication and four hundred of them immediately responded.
"I could feel an immediate difference," said Miss Mears. "I did not know then what had happened. But there was an authority, a sureness, a fire in his spirit, that hadn't been there when he first arrived."
Billy says that this experience at Forest Home transformed his entire ministry. From Forest Home he went down to the Los Angeles Crusade, but instead of fear he had the fire of faith of the Spirit in his heart. Instead of being unsure of himself, he was sure in the authority of the Lord. He now had the authority he had prayed for, kneeling there on the dedicated ground of Forest Home, and his faith conveyed itself to all who heard him. Billy says "I stopped trying to prove that the Bible was true. I had settled it in my own mind that it was, and this faith was conveyed to the audience. Over and over I found myself saying, 'The Bible says!' I felt as though I were merely a voice through which the Holy Spirit was speaking."
Today, Billy Graham's ministry is referred to as "before" or "after" the Los Angeles campaign. I believe if the true secret were known it would be "before and after his Forest Home experience."
And this has been the constant aim in everything at Forest Home: to keep it so consecrated in every area of its existence that it is in truth a place where the spiritual mountain-top experience will be translated
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into triumphant valley living for all who come. This experience of Billy Graham could be duplicated in the lives of thousands of Forest Home campers, not in physical results, perhaps, but in spiritual decisions.
Last Memorial Day at Forest Home, there was an informal traditional dinner after the "God of the Mountain pageant," which had ten jet planes flying over in the formation of a cross, especially authorized by the Department of Defense; a full band and choir; forty military personnel; biblical sequences; a covered wagon; western riders; a Negro choir; historical figures; a reënactment of the dedication of the site of Forest Home in 1876 by the California State Treasurer to the "glory of the Lord"; all of this illustrative of the theme, "America, one nation united under the Living God." At the dinner Miss Mears got up to share a few words. Someone groaned, "Please, Miss Mears, please don't suggest anything new. We just can't take anything more today!" Well, she took it easy. All she talked about was a million-dollar Christian hospital that some Christian doctors had been proposing for the Forest Home canyon.
One of her "spiritual sons," Bob Ferguson, pastor of the Fremont Presbyterian Church in Sacramento, California, writes: "As they said of Sir Christopher Wren in London on a plaque that is left to him in St. Paul's Cathedral, 'If you would see his memorial, look about you,' — Miss Mears' memorial is left indelibly in lives she has helped to lead into a knowledge of God and Christ."
As we walk the paths of Forest Home Christian Conference Center, founded by Henrietta Mears in 1938 and prayed over constantly by her ever since, we can look around and see the memorial that she has created to the glory of our Lord and Saviour. Miss Mears' memorial is the presence of the Saviour in our hearts. She would want no other.
