an article provided 18MAR09 by Disciples News Service
By that evening, the two North American missionaries had had all they could take. After years of patient teaching, why could these people not see that 'order' was the Disciples' way?
So the missionaries walked into the service, ordered the congregation out,
and prepared to install a lock on the church door.
Not until decades after that night in 1935 would it become clear that the missionaries could lock a door, but could not lock out the Spirit.
The missionaries were Vere C. Carpenter and C. Manley Morton, and the church, Calle Comerío Christian in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. Carpenter had arrived on the island in 1906 and Morton in 1923. Both missionary families followed the first North American Disciples sent to the island in 1899, shortly after the U.S. defeat of Spain in the 1898 Spanish-American War.
Early Disciple missionaries on the island established orphanages
to address the social ills they encountered,
but leaders then shifted their emphasis to evangelism.
By the time Puerto Rico found itself facing the Great Depression,
Disciple membership was at more than 1,500 believers.
And then the trouble started - trouble, that is,
from the North American perspective.
The missionaries dubbed it a "pentecostal movement."
For the Puerto Rican Disciples, it was "Avivamiento" - a revival.
Puerto Rican pastor Joaquín Vargas, in his classic history, Los Discípulos de Cristo en Puerto Rico, described the beginnings of what would become a sweeping renewal movement.
In December 1932, a lay leader of the Calle Comerío church decided to hold a noontime prayer session. The meeting touched a spiritual nerve.
Though Puerto Rican Disciples interpreted the stirrings as God's presence,
their North American counterparts viewed it as a rejection of Disciple tradition. Missionary Morton urged the United Christian Missionary Society in a 1934 letter to tighten control because of the "departure from the traditional and scriptural position which the Disciples have always occupied."
Tensions mounting, Morton and Carpenter interrupted the evening service at Calle Comerío. Seeing their orders ignored, they headed off to find the police. But a judge who taught Sunday school at another Disciples congregation
refused to let authorities break up the service.
Eventually, dialogue triumphed over drawn lines and ultimatums.
Reflecting near the end of his life decades after the Avivamiento,
Morton saw the tumultuous events of the 1930s in a different light.
"That the Disciples of Christ in Puerto Rico could undergo that experience
as a united people is a modern-day miracle," Morton said in his unpublished autobiography, reproduced in Spanish by Vargas.
"It is also proof that Christians, however different their experiences and beliefs, if they hold true love in their hearts, and the willingness to look for and trust God's direction, can get along with each other."
Amazing what a little "Avivamiento" can lead to.
Written by: Ted Parks
Associate Professor of Spanish
Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN
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