My wife and I have a little boy, Teddy, who’s going to be five at the end of this month. A few weeks ago, we decided it was time for him to learn a musical instrument. My wife took him to his first piano lesson. The piano teacher was late but finally she showed up—with this huge dog. All during the piano lesson the dog kept jumping up between my boy and the piano, licking his face and barking. It was generally breaking up the continuity of things.

When the lesson was over, my wife asked Teddy what he thought of the piano lesson. He thought about it a minute. Finally he told his mother he didn’t really care all that much about the piano lessons. But he sure would like to have a dog. (I guess we will get him one.)

The moral of that story is that we don’t always get what we expected. I came here expecting a wonderful sightseeing experience, and some routine revival services. And it turns out that the greatest wonder in Hawaii is this outpouring of the Spirit. You’ve created as light in this hall a brilliant as any light I’ve seen outside on the mountains and sea. I had not expected it, a revival as great as those of the past, those led by your founder, Sister Aimee. So if our hearts are open, sometimes we get not what we expected but something just as good, or better.

I came from a mixed religious background: my father was Jewish, my mother Christian. When I was a child I went to Church on Sundays, and to the synagogue on holidays. I have always had faith in God, and a great respect for different ways of worship. Thus, religion has been a great theme in my life and work.

I always wanted to be a writer. I started publishing poetry in my teenage years and for many years wrote only poetry. But in the 1980s, I started writing stories. The first stories of mine were widely-read stories about growing up in a household with two religions (and two holidays). Naturally, I was called upon to write more and more about religious and philosophical subjects.

In 1988, I was offered a contract to write two new books for a New York publisher. The first book was to be about all the different kinds of love; the second was to be a book about an important American figure in the history of American philosophy or religion. I sought for quite a while to find an American philosopher or preacher who might capture my imagination.

At last I recalled a little article I had once read in an almanac, under the name: Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944). The article was less than two pages long. It was just a rough summary of McPherson’s life, it told how the farm girl of 17 married the itinerant preacher, Robert Semple, who her took to China and died shortly after, leaving his young wife pregnant and penniless. It told how Aimee and her infant daughter Roberta found her way back to the U.S. where she married Harold McPherson who fathered her son, Rolf; how she left her second husband and set out in a battered car for a career as a revivalist. It told how she achieved great success in Southern California, how in 1921, while Sister Aimee was speaking at an outdoor rally in San Diego, an inspired woman rose from a wheelchair and tottered toward the podium; and how hundreds of other invalids followed, to be healed; how overnight Aimee Semple McPherson developed a national reputation as a faith-healer and opened a temple in Echo Park.

The article said the Temple had a huge rotating lighted cross which could be seen for 50 miles. Sister had her own in-house radio station so she could broadcast her sermons. Her dramatic stage presence and her beautiful auburn hair added to her appeal. She was able to attract a full house almost every time she preached.

After reaching her peak in 1926, said the article, "she was soon to suffer a spectacular fall from grace." In mid-May of that year, she disappeared while swimming in the Pacific Ocean. She was believed to have drowned and was widely mourned. Then Sister reappeared a month later, with a horrific tale of having been kidnapped.

Much of the American public did not accept her story. They believed rumors that Aimee had gone away with a lover whom she wished to conceal from her congregation as well as the general pubic. One of the longest and most notorious court cases in the history of California tried to convict the evangelist of fraud and obstruction of justice. The courts failed in their efforts, but the case damaged the preacher’s reputation and public appeal. The almanac goes on to describe the decline of Sister Aimee’s fortunes, and her death in 1944 from an overdose of sleeping pills.

This was all I knew about Sister Aimee in 1988, this vague mixture of truths and half-truths, suppositions and myths. And it was all most people knew! But the broad lines of the story appealed to me. It seemed like a great American romance, maybe a great American tragedy. You see, I am a storyteller, first and foremost. I am not a scholar, nor a journalist, though I greatly admire those disciplines. In my work, I base my stories upon scrupulous scholarship and honest journalism. I am interested in telling a good story in the most engaging way I can. Nothing makes a better story than the truth.

I decided that if I could find out the truth about Aimee Semple McPherson, I would have a wonderful story to tell. Who was Sister Aimee? What was she really like? What was this religion she was preaching with such passion? What about this faith healing? Was she for real? Did she really help the lame to walk and the blind to see? Or was it all just a trick to make money?

I went to the library to look for the answers. I figured there must be books that would tell me these things. But sadly, all I could find in the libraries were books about Sister Aimee’s disappearance, the kidnapping and the famous trial. Those things were interesting, of course, but what about the religion? What about the healings?

It didn’t take me long to discover that Sister Aimee had written several of her own books. And they answered some of my questions. But Sister’s books, while fascinating and often charmingly written, only told part of the story — the part she wanted us to hear. If I were to write a true life of Aimee Semple McPherson, I would need a great deal more data, from more objective sources.

The next step was to interview Dr. Rolf K. McPherson and the Church archives. I wrote to Dr. McPherson, telling him of my interests and asking to see him and to use the archives. His response was: "Come along and we’ll see what we can do for you." The risk was: I had been told that other scholars had to sign an agreement to avoid certain topics (the kidnapping, the marriages). I probably couldn’t do that, and certainly could not agree not to record or express the truth as I might discover it with or without the Church’s resources.

I went to Los Angeles anyway. I will never forget the first time I met Rolf McPherson, how he listened thoroughly and thoughtfully, then provided me with access to the archives and the office staff’s support. This was amazing; after all, Sister Aimee was not only the founder of the Church he headed. She was his own mother.

It is hard to describe my excitement during that first week I spent at the Foursquare headquarters so long ago. If I had been concerned that Mrs. McPherson had idealized or exaggerated the drama of her life, imagine my surprise to discover that her own account of her ministry was actually modest compared to the accounts of others. The archives of the church are a treasury to be sure and every day produced some new treasure, some new wonder of Sister Aimee’s life.

I had come looking for Aimee’s character, to find out who exactly she was, and what she had done that made her one of the most famous women of her era. Here are some of the things I found:

AN AUTHENTIC SPIRITUALITY

First, Aimee Semple McPherson’s spirituality was totally authentic. I’m always asked if Sister Aimee was real and she was. Though Sister would have scoffed at the very idea that she might be compared to a saint, she did in fact share with the saints certain rare gifts of the Spirit. There is a spiritual disposition to "A Personality" type people. People have it in different degrees. I discovered that Sister was, from childhood, a mystic. A mystic is someone who has direct communion with God through contemplation and inner light.

I quote from page 38 of my book: "The entire atmosphere seemed stretched taut in the clear, cold air, like the strings of an overstrained violin. The very stars were singing in a high-pitched tremolo. Upon the gem-arched Milky Way the radiant moon was gliding lazily. Venus winked at Saturn . . ." Overwhelmed by the music of the spheres yet still in anguish over her crisis of faith, she stretched her arms out the window and, "looking past the stars," whispered, "Oh God — if there be a God — reveal yourself to me!" An answer would come within forty-eight hours.

So even before her conversion, her baptism in the Holy Spirit, Sister Aimee had the spiritual nature that would lead her to extraordinary accomplishments as a minister of the Gospel.

A MINISTRY ANOINTED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT

Writers on Pentecostalism speak of the four major charismata or gifts of the Spirit. These are Glossolalia, Prophecy, Interpretation of Tongues, and the power of Healing. Perhaps the most dramatic, electrifying part of Sister’s story is the period of 1919-1922, beginning with the influenza epidemic, and ending with the building of Angelus Temple, when Sister Aimee conducted her great healing services in tents and civic auditoriums from coast to coast. These services were followed closely by the secular press, and as the first biographer to access those press accounts, I was able to tell a story that is stranger than fiction.

Rolf and the Rake, p. 133: In Philadelphia the barefoot Rolf McPherson, ramping on the campgrounds, came down on the pointed tines of a steel rake. One of the points pierced the sole of his foot. The pain was dull and deep, the blood a dark color. Rolf cannot remember his mother catching him up in her arms, carrying him to the small tent where they had set up housekeeping, and laying him down on the army cot. As she held the bleeding foot in her hand and gazed into his eyes, he felt a remarkable warmth in her hand and the pain seemed to drain into it. He went to sleep.

When he awoke, he was by himself. Far away he heard the roar of a crowd. It seemed to him that he had been deeply asleep for days. He remembered that he had stepped on a rake. There was brown dried blood on the sheets. He sat up and grabbed for the wounded foot, turning it up to look at the puncture hole. Not finding it, he figured he must have grabbed the wrong foot. He turned up his other foot and found no sign of any wound there either.

Then there was the healing of the blind Lucille Rhodes, page 230: Lucille Rhodes had been blind for nine years, since infancy. She lived with her mother and father at 1511 Thirty-third Street, Oakland. They had brought the child to San Jose days earlier, and the family had been following Minnie’s instructions, earnestly praying and fasting the day before. Now the child, clutching at a small bouquet, was led to the altar by her mother, both of them looking brave and confused.

"Jesus said, Forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God," called Aimee with upraised hands as the child stepped through the darkness toward her. The girl anticipated light in the ring of the evangelist’s voice, full of hope. First, Aimee would call upon the thousands to bow their heads and close their eyes to join this child in her shadows and pray at once for her sight to be restored. Over the babble of a thousand prayers, Lucille Rhodes heard the evangelist’s clear, spacious voice as she recited from Job and the Psalms.

...Shining with oil, the evangelist’s hands went out to the bowed head of Lucille Rhodes. Thousands of voices prayed for the light to enter. Aimee’s left hand held the back of the girl’s head while the right thumb and forefinger rubbed oil into the notches above her eyes . . . One side of Lucille’s face became contorted, then the other. She squinted in pain. Like someone who has been shut up in a dark cellar for days and suddenly let out into the noonday sun, she covered her eyes to protect them. . . "Can you see, child?" a gentleman asked. "Yes," she replied, "I can see my Mama."

A BOLD, COMPASSIONATE EVANGELISM

There are countless stories of similar miracles, and other stories equally wonderful, of Sister Aimee’s acts of charity and bold evangelism. She was the first evangelist to preach to integrated meetings in the south. And after building Angelus Temple in 1923, she was one of the first leaders to insist upon the equality of women in the clergy and administration of the church. In this, of course, she was influenced by the Salvation Army and her mother, Minnie Kennedy, who was raised in that tradition.

I was greatly impressed with the public record of the Foursquare Church’s social ministry during the Great Depression of the 1930s. As I began my field research in Los Angeles, interviewing subjects from both the religious and secular worlds, I discovered that many older citizens only know one thing about Aimee Semple McPherson. They knew nothing about her preaching, they knew nothing about her miraculous healings and very little about her disappearance. But what everybody remembered is that during the Great Depression Sister Aimee and her church commissary kept thousands of people from starving to death. The Foursquare commissary and soup kitchen was the most effective relief organization in the city during those dreadful times.

Sister also cared for unwed mothers and abandoned babies, trained young evangelists for the field, led Bible study groups, and during the second world war sold about $450,000 worth of War Bonds. She managed to do all of this while managing a church with dozens of branches and thousands of members and preaching several times a week. Her Sunday sermons were full production scripted performances, with full orchestra, chorus, costumes and stage scenery. She called them illustrated sermons. Sister would take a popular story like "The Lone Ranger" or "The Wizard of Oz" and give it a comic religious twist, and turn the story into a religious musical comedy. As strange as that may sound, it was one of the most popular entertainments in Los Angeles. Sister had a genius for theatre, and her theatrical ministry, as she called it, attracted such Hollywood luminaries as Charlie Chaplin, Anthony Quinn, Talulah Bankhead and Agnes de Mille.

A CHRIST-CENTERED MESSAGE

Sister Aimee did not ever want to see her revival marginalized. She wanted the Lord’s message to be center stage. She wanted her church to be open and attractive to everybody, and she made sure that Angelus Temple was not overlooked in the bustle and business of secular life. This was the purpose of the illustrated sermons, that filled Angelus Temple every Sunday for as long as she lived.

So, this is the remarkable woman that I came to admire and honor during my years of researching her life and studying her work. A truly unique woman, passionate and gifted in all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Sister was not a saint, she would be the first to tell you with a giggle, in that girlish voice she used when she was joking. She had her weaknesses: she had a hot temper, she was too controlling, she was restless, and she had no head for the details of business or money management. But she kept busy doing the things she loved and did well: preaching, feeding the hungry, leading folks to Christ through conversion, teaching evangelists, and staging her illustrated sermons. Her business was inspired, day in and day out, by the Holy Spirit and her faith in God.

A LEGACY FOR TODAY

After spending several years of my life studying the writings and deeds of this woman, getting to know her family, friends and students, I began to feel as if I had known her. Her spirit stood beside me as I wrote her story. In learning to understand what Sister Aimee thought and felt in many situations in her life, I have also learned to imagine what she might say or do under circumstances that she might or might not have experienced. This is part of the writer’s art. We do not create facts but we must understand people well enough to make sense of their actions. So, with all due humility, I can make a fair guess as to how Sister Aimee may have acted in a particular situation, and I believe I know what she might say about what you and I are doing right this minute.

Late last year, when Dr. Risser asked me if I might come and address this audience, he asked me a question which I have been thinking about every since. What part of Sister’s teaching would she most hope to see the Church carry with it into the next millennium? What would Sister encourage you to do, as ministers, teachers, leaders in your communities?

First, I am sure she would want to give us the easy answer — easy only to think of, not easy to put into action. She would point to the source of all inspiration and virtuous example: Our Lord Himself. She would encourage Christ-like virtues in all of us — compassion, charity, forgiveness of sins, and daily prayer. She would urge us to follow the example of Christ, but with a sense of humor. No one knew better than Sister her own human frailties; if we cannot laugh at ourselves and forgive ourselves for failure, then we cannot move on to try again the next day to do better.

I want to consider what was special about Sister Aimee’s message. What made it personal, what made it her own. And I think it all boils down to these two ideas, both deeply rooted in her evangelism. Sister Aimee saw herself first, last and foremost as an evangelist, and an evangelist is someone who comes to bear the Good News.

The first of these ideas we may call, as she called it, "The Gospel of Joy." Many preachers of the Wesleyan tradition preached the "Gospel of Fear," threatening their congregations with hellfire and brimstone if they did not do the Lord’s bidding. Some preachers continue to rely on this method to gain power in the pulpit.

But this was not Sister’s way. She wasn’t much interested in the devil. Actually, when she did mention him, or when the devil appeared as a character on stage at Angelus Temple, he was always a sort of comic character with horns and a barbed tail, a clown who was quickly defeated by the goodness of Christians or by the power of the Almighty. Aimee was a "yea-sayer," a positive thinker. "No more of old hell, boys," she would shout, "Let’s talk about Heaven!"

Many of you have been active in social ministries. You have worked with the poor, the handicapped; and those of you particularly who have helped people whose lives have been endangered and damaged by drug addition and alcoholism — you have seen how Sister Aimee’s Gospel of joy, the promise of God’s love, hope and light at the end of the tunnel, is the most effective cure for these diseases that has ever been discovered. Where doctors and medicines sometimes fail, God can heal the broken spirit; God will come to the rescue. There are people dying everyday for lack of the thing you have to give them.

The second feature of Sister’s message is one of her favorite sayings: "Stay in the middle of the road." Like so much of Sister McPherson’s wisdom, it has ancient origins: one of the two sentences carved about the Delphic Oracle in ancient Greece advises us to observe the Golden mean and observe moderation in all things. "Stay in the middle of the road" has a host of implications.

Aimee Semple McPherson was a major figure in the history of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. She didn’t really mean to be a major influence, as she never aligned herself with any of the official or established Pentecostal churches or conferences. She was a free spirit, a traveling revivalist. But she was a major figure anyhow because she was so famous — everything she did was news, and because she exercised the gifts of the spirit with extraordinary results.

Sister was a leader by example. Everyone in the religious community was interested in what she did and what she believed. They wanted her opinions on all the major theological questions of the day. She was often asked if she was a fundamentalist. She was repeatedly asked if she was a Pentecostal, if she believed in the doctrine of sanctification, if she believed in faith without works, etc. She was particularly called upon to judge the question of emotion in worship. How much emotion in church is enough, how much is good and how much is too much? How should we pray?

Now Sister stood squarely in the tradition of John Wesley and Albert Simpson. She was a passionate woman, and she herself was passionate in her devotions. She had been baptized in the Holy Spirit as a teenager, and officiated over the conversions of countless others. She spoke in tongues and had the gift of interpreting tongues.

Sister was also a practical woman who was leading a nationwide revival. There was a no-nonsense side to her evangelism. In 1919, when her revival had reached a certain critical mass, Sister worked to control the hysteria that began to dominate her meetings. She had a number of ways of doing this, but she loved the analogy of the automobile. She would say, "Now you see, brother, that automobile over there has a top speed of sixty-five miles an hour. I can drive her at that speed anytime I want to. But I’m not about to drive my car at top speed through your little village and frighten the dogs and chickens and children. It wouldn’t be seemly and it isn’t necessary to get where I need to go." In this simple way, Sister argued for peaceful prayer and moderation in prayer meetings, so as not to frighten others, or to disturb the focus of anyone’s devotions.

She was leading her religion into the mainstream. And so she advised her young student evangelists to "Stay in the middle of the road," not only in the matter of church doctrine and politics but even in the manner of prayer. Emotion, yes, of course, but never emotion at the expense of order and the peace.

"Stay in the middle of the road." That favorite saying of Sister’s has yet another meaning. Sister was first and last an evangelist. Her mission in Christ was to bring the Good News of His gift of eternal life to all those who might not be aware of it. And so, Sister was bound and determined to bring her revival to the front and center of American life. She preached from the back seat of an automobile crossing America in the early 1900s. She scattered religious tracts from a soaring airplane. She was the first evangelist ever to preach the Gospel on the radio, (and by the way the first woman in America to have her own radio operator’s license). She preached in factories and in the cotton fields to mixed audiences of white and black worshipers. She preached in tents and in boxing rings between fights, and in speakeasies and Broadway theatres.

Sister absolutely refused to be marginalized or colonized by the secular culture. She knew how to get people’s attention without haranguing, judging or otherwise alienating them. She was a persuasive reformer, an evangelist with charm. She stayed in the middle of the road in a very fascinating and original way, more of a delight than a nuisance. We would do well to follow her example in this, Sister Aimee’s resourcefulness. She was endlessly inventive and resourceful in her way of spreading the Good News.

One of the most admirable traits of Aimee Semple McPherson’s character, during her entire life, was her open-mindedness and her intellectual curiosity. She traveled everywhere, all over the world, was interested in all ways of worship and had great respect for the world’s great religions. She was a careful and critical reader of the Bible.

But her reading did not begin or end with the Bible. She read everything: history, novels, poetry, magazines and newspapers. She never stopped learning and broadening her interests in the wonders of God’s creation. She understood that in order to bring her revival to the world she had to understand the world, to be a part of it. That was all part of her idea to "Stay in the middle of the road." In my own way I am learning to follow Sister’s example.

Your invitation to me, your including me in these meetings is clear evidence that the spirit of Sister Aimee’s revival, its kindness, its open-mindedness, its celebration of the varieties of experience, is very much alive at the beginning of the new millennium. I hope you will continue to recall your founder’s character and her example. And may the Church of the Foursquare Gospel thrive into the next millennium.