SECTION 1, PAGE 2 SUNDAY SUN JULY 14, 1991
THE 'CHURCH WITH NO NAME' COMES TO TOWN
THE SECRET SECT
Little-known group holds another quiet gathering
By Brad Stutzman
Sun Staff Writer
(Epilogue Below - Worker Quotes)
The middle-aged woman in the calf-length dress and sensible shoes backs away from the reporter, as if maybe Old Scratch himself is trying to hand her his business card.
"I have to be in meeting," she says.
The reporter explains that he means no harm and the woman soon warms up, a smile replacing the panicked look on her face.
"You're welcome here," she says, walking across the rolling land of green grass and shade trees, to a huge tent perhaps a hundred yards in the distance.
"I'll show you the way."
'Here' is the 63-acre spread that belongs to Ben and Burnette Klepzig, off County Road 332 in Weir.
Here is also a state of mind, where more than 1,000 souls from the church that doesn't have a name are increasing Weir's population by four-or-five fold this weekend.
Everybody's looking for something.
And here - where Ben and his wife Burnette have built three spartan dormitories for the crowd that's come every year, for 14 years - where men, women and children share fellowship they say they did not find in mainstream Christianity.
Church With No Name
A builder by trade and a Lutheran by birth, Ben Klepzig is a hearty 77.
He's retired now. Or at least as retired as a person can be said to be when they take it on themselves to host hundreds of people for a four-day weekend every summer.
They come in their cars and their campers; dressing modestly, speaking softly and testifying their faith two or three times daily underneath the big canvas tent..
Conventions,
that's what these gatherings are called by the
Unconventional followers of a religion that has no name,
no property and no history that anyone here can remember.
"I've been professing in this for over 50 years," Klepzig; says, recalling how he found the church - or how it found him when he was a 22-year-old young man in Illinois.
"We were raised Lutherans," he says, referring to himself and his. wife. "Some folks that were in this took us to their meeting. They were giving the Gospel like the early Disciples. They stick to the Bible. I can just imagine the early Christians, how they did it. And it works."
While it seems to be part of human nature to pigeon-hole and categorize, Klepzig says he also likes the idea that the Church With No Name has no name.
"Jesus didn't take a [church] name," Klepzig says. "When we belonged to the Lutheran Church, we called ourselves Lutherans, because Martin Luther started it. We just call ourselves Christians and leave it at that."
The Enemy Within?
When it comes to public speaking, Sahnyong Lee isn't a stem-winder or a spell-binder.
He testifies for 50 minutes.
He speaks in a monotone that is punctuated
with parables and personal anecdotes and the occasional joke or two.
But he comes back to the same theme time and again.
All the church members offering testimony under the tent Thursday morning do.
It is folly, perhaps even arrogance, to attempt boiling a person's faith down to a sentence or two.
Having said that, however, the testimony from Thursday morning would indicate that the followers of the church without a name believe that if worldly possessions aren't exactly evil, they are at least more than a little dangerous.
As a microphone is passed around the tent - holding upwards of 800 people on this first day of the convention with hundreds more due - one woman stands and asks God that "the things of this world not become a distraction to me."
“Like Joshua and Caleb we are well able to overcome the enemy, because we are not beyond the love of Jesus," another person states.
“If a man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him," an elderly man says.
"The devil tries to put things in our way."
And so it goes.
Most of the people at the convention are Texans, Klepzig says. But others come from throughout America and beyond- her borders. '
Lee, for instance, is a Korean.
"God wants us to love God. He doesn't want us to love the temporary world," Lee says in his testimony. "I know that potatoes and gravy and cherry pie is not so bad. But the problem with the world is that it is just temporary. It is not our house."
"'The flesh will always lead us wrong," Lee says.
"We need to be careful,
what feeds our flesh and what feeds our spirit.
We often speak of convention like it's a feast.
It's a feast for our soul, but it's a fast for our flesh."
Midway through the morning testimony a towheaded teenage boy in a black t-shirt and blue jeans eases himself into the back of the tent.
He sits down next to a gum-chewing girl who looks to be about his age. She wears pigtails and glasses and she wears a long skirt, like all the girls and women here do.
The boy puts his arm around the back of the girl's chair. They are close to touching - maybe wanting to - but they do not.
They put their heads together and talk.
Have Clergy, Will Travel
William Lewis
"Public worship on private property.” That's how church minister William Lewis describes the convention, over lunch inside a large picnic shelter.
Just like the church that does not have a name, the leaders do not call themselves by titles like 'Reverend' or 'Father,' Lewis says.
They will answer to the name of 'minister', but it doesn't sound like it's being pronounced with capital letters.
Lunch is simple and filling and served family style with very little fuss.
Lewis eats his vegetable and beef stew - served with boiled potatoes and cold slaw and washed down with ice tea - while he tries to explain the basic beliefs of this church without a name.
You will hear them preach against worldly goods,
but among the hundreds of cars on the Klepzig land
you will also notice some sharp looking travel trailers,
as well as at least one Cadillac, Lincoln, Mercedes and Corvette Stingray.
"Everyone here has to live like every other human,” says Lewis; quietly and patiently and in a voice that might make you think of Burl Ives. “Most of the people here have good homes. We pay taxes on these buildings. There's not a tax-exempt building here.”
"It's been in this area 50 years,” he says, noting that conventions used to be held on undeveloped property at the intersection of Highways 183 and 620.
The ministers have no homes. Lewis says Like circuit preachers of old, they travel constantly, holding meetings in the homes of the faithful.
Accepting no salaries, they depend on the church members for bed and board.
Like Klepzig, Lewis did not always belong to the church without a name.
He was raised a Baptist, but joined the no-name church in 1939, when he was an 18-year-old laborer just out of high school.
Women can be ministers - indeed many are - but the women wear skirts or dresses. They don't wear slacks and they don't show much leg.
Lewis says members of his adopted faith and the Baptists do share some common ground.
The church without a name frowns on dancing, drinking and television or movie watching, according to some tracts published by former members who have left the fold.
"Our people don't go for those things,” Lewis says.
“We find our satisfaction in the quiet life.”
One of the church's central tenants is its practice of sending out ministers in pairs and through this the church gets one of its several nick- names, the “Two-By-Twos,”
According to the Christian Research Institute, the church without a name is also known - at least to outsiders - as the 'Go Preachers,' 'The Jesus Way,' 'Christian Convention' and - taken from the name of an alleged 19th Century co-founder named Cooney, - the 'Cooneyites.'
"We go out together, two men or two women,” Lewis says, noting that ministers are allowed to marry but most choose not to.
"We couldn't go the way we go and spend our lives the way we spend them if we were married,” Lewis says. “We have to be freer than that.”
While the ministers - like the church itself - do not have physical addresses and travel door-to-door, Lewis says they are not in the business of actively seeking converts.
"We don't do that so much," he says. "People have been taken so much ... you know ... the televangelists.
We're here to be strangers because Jesus himself was a stranger.
We depend on our own people. It's like a family."
Some Christian Controversy
Not everyone likes the church without a name.
Some former members have published books and tracts stating that the ministers try to have too much sway in the personal lives of church members.
The Christian Research Institute, based in San Juan Capistrano, California, seems especially hostile. It puts church membership at 600,000 worldwide, while acknowledging that hard data is hard to come by, simply because of the church's relatively loose-knit nature
One CRI tract states: "The Cooneyites are extremely exclusive. They believe that they are alone are (sic ) the true disciples of Christ ... They boldly state that there are no true servants of Christ in any other church and that they are all false prophets."
That, for whatever it is worth, did not seem to be the case after a few hours went with church members Thursday.
While the Encyclopedia of American Religions states that the 'Two-By-Twos' - as it calls them - were founded in 1886 by a Scotsman named William Irvine, both Lewis and Klepzig profess ignorance of any modern-day church history.
Lewis says there is no one founder or group of founders
that this church without a written doctrine
- except the Bible -
can trace its lineage to.
"Not to my knowledge," Lewis says. "We don't treat genealogical records as being purposeful. What would it mean to me if I could prove I'm a descendant of Abraham?"
"It Was before my time," Klepzig says. "No one here claims to have started it."
Lewis says that church members do not claim - as some say they claim - to be descendants of the original Apostles.
"We don't make any claims to that," Lewis says.
"We have no quarrel with other denominations," he says, as a final word on the subject.
The Kids Like It
While the church that doesn't have a name may be thoroughly unmodern, its members do not appear to be especially anti-modern.
The kids - who unlike many of their parents were actually raised in the faith - seem be have no qualms with their religion.
After lunch, boys are picking up trash and girls are alternately clearing the tables and putting down place settings for the evening meal.
Janet Grunden, a 19-year-old from East Texas, was one of those in the dish-washing brigade.
"I've waited tables for 12 years. Now I've graduated," she jokes.
Grunden, who will be studying veterinary medicine at this fall at (sic) Texas A&M University, says she doesn't mind the church's strictness on lifestyle and dress.
"It's like part of the religion," she says.
"It's something the women decided to do.
We like to follow their example. But it's not part of the rules or anything like that.
This is just a way of life for me," says Detje Kelp, a 22-year-old Bryan-area woman who is an A&M senior majoring in bio-med.
In addition, there's added comfort in the group when you're a member of a religious minority, as Gretchen Grunden, Janet's younger sister, points out.
"In our town we're the only family, but here there are hundreds of others around," she says.
"We all have the same spirit," Janet says.
Next Stop, Happy
Lunch is over.
The volunteer help - all but the infirm have a job at the conventions - go about the business of getting ready for dinner. The food is all bought or brought by church members.
People mingle in small groups and chat. New acquaintances are made and old friendships are renewed.
Lewis spoke earlier of family and in some ways the convention does have the air of a family reunion, minus the dominoes and horseshoes.
Lewis heads back to one of the dormitories for an afternoon nap.
Other people take walk (sic ) along the narrow and winding country roads that ring the 63 acres of Ben and Burnette Klepzig's land.
The boy with the black t-shirt and the pigtailed girl are among those out walking. They are holding hands. You wave to them and they wave back.
There will be another gathering of the church without name next week.
It will be near Amarillo, Lewis says, in a town called Happy.
(Epilogue)
Here are several quotes from workers,
that counter Mr. Lewis' comments to the reporter
and blatantly display their dishonesty on several different fronts.
~~ Tharold Sylvester who told the press that "We don't deny it when asked if historical account of our founding was true." (SKAGIT HERALD August 18, 1983) --
But then, just thirty days later was recorded telling the 'friends,' "We are not following some way founded in the early 1900s but it goes clear back to Christ." (NOVEMBER 1983)
"It depends who we are talking to whether we believe in the Trinity or not."
~~ Dale Bores (Sacramento, 1979)
“A person may be born again through a living witness, without one ~ never. What is the good of a man being a preacher if God can save souls without him? One cannot be born again through reading the Bible."
~~ William Irvine, Philadelphia Convention, 1907
“Scripture is not the word of God until it is spoken by a worker.”
~~ Everett Swanson, 1969
“Faith cometh by hearing, not reading. No one can receive salvation simply by reading the Bible.”
~~ Bruce Waddell, Glen Valley Convention - August 4, 1988
"Two Lords, Jesus and God. But they are not one God. Jesus had a sinful nature but did not sin. His blood came from Mary, the seed of David. Jesus was not baptized to make Him God's Son, He was already God's Son. He wanted to give to the world the example of being dead to the world and himself and all false religions. When we believe in Jesus, we are believing in God's standard."
Don't ever question the workers or their judgment......they "KNOW" best!
~~ James Walden, Edgewood Convention
“God’s servants are the understanding Authority of the word of God.”
~~ Willis Propp - Olympia convention - August 26, 1979
"The church in the home is a part of Jesus, just as the ministry is a part of Jesus, and you cannot have the blood of Jesus without accepting all of Jesus...-The truth is the two-and-two ministry and the church meeting in the home."
~~ William Petersen, overseer of Kansas
"There are two fundamentals of the faith of Jesus that are vital to a true understanding and interpretation as recorded in the New Testament. First, the church in the home, and the home only; secondly, the preacher without a home. These two are foundational."
~~ Jack Carroll
"For the spirit and attitude you assume toward those that have made themselves poor, homeless, and strangers for the gospel's sake will ultimately determine where you will be in eternity."
~~ Jack Carroll ~ Manhattan MT Convention 10/4/45
"Oh, no, this way didn't start 95 year ago. It started in the very heart of God."
~~ David Leonhardt, Personal Communication, Summer 1996
"If it could be proven to me in black and white that this church was started by a man, I would never preach another word."
~~ Harry Brownlee, (Gospel Meeting)
"God's servants are interpreters, interpreting God's word into things they can understand."
~~ Walter Burkenshaw, (Glen Valley, August 15, 1988)
Many things are seen in worldly homes that can have no place in a Godly home. I have been distressed lately to learn that some of God's people are bringing TVs into their homes. this is sad, because it will not help you to be more spiritual. The TV advertisements say "Buy a TV and bring the world into your home." Is that the kind of atmosphere you want there? When we, as God's servants, visit your homes, we endeavor always to bring with us an influence that will help create a Godly atmosphere there, and we know that the TV counteracts our efforts and if you insist on having that in your home we can only conclude that you do not want our influence there. We have too little time at best to read and meditate and pray. Certainly we are losing out if we devote time to the trash that comes over TV. Don't make it more difficult for God to bless you.
~~ Ed Cornock ~ Denver, Colorado Convention September 11, 1965
Receiving the 'workers' is the same as receiving Jesus.
~~ Ruth Henderson, Special Meeting, New Mexico
"The church in the home and the preacher without a home are vital...What a terrible calamity it would be if we, as the servants of God, had to be continually occupied with building synagogues. But our eyes have been opened to see that the building of synagogues and the hiring of preachers belongs to Babylon."
— Jack Carroll
"You can tell whether a church is a false church or not if it was started by a man or woman. We are the only church on earth that was started by Christ."
~~ Jack Carroll
