The Jack Miller Archive

See Roseann Trott’s Email dated August 15, 2015. CJM Archives in St. Louis, Mo.

I think I got the cream of Dad's parenting. When I was six he drove me to first grade and taught me all the grammar that I know to this day on the way. That was vintage Dad---always involving others in what he was doing for one thing. But the other part of it was that he delighted to challenge people, sometimes throwing them in over their heads to teach them to swim. (That would describe setting up Hillside house and appointing seminary students as houseparents, supporting young men (in their twenties) as elders, pastors, and church planters and the early missions in Uganda and Ireland.) But there was also a love of education and learning, typical of the Reformed churches in the fifties, that threatened (or sometimes succeeded) in supplanting a heart given to Christ as the center of the Christian life and the church life. For example, I don't remember hearing in my Reformed high school about giving Christ my heart or taking up my cross and following Jesus. The Christian life was more about the intellectual defense of the faith (which Dad could do quite well, earlier and later in life and ministry). At any rate, I thrived (or thought I did) on an education-driven childhood, in which Mom contributed as well as Dad. They read (or told) us the classics, taught us to understand and appreciate art and sprinkled in history and church history. And Bible, lots of Bible. . . .

I began to wonder---my fears, my obsessions, all the things about myself, that I thought,"I was just born this way, I can never change"----maybe God could change them. I prayed and prayed, begging God to change me. Begging him to help me in my marriage. Nothing happened. So one night at an outdoor youth group/Bible study in Bucks County, when the stars had come out and it was time for questions, under the cover of darkness I said, "I keep repenting and repenting and nothing is happening." And Dad said, "Unless you turn to Christ, repenting is just turning in circles." Well, he had nailed it. I was just turning in on myself. At that time, the Lord gave me deep conviction over many sins and I knew such a feeling of cleanness, a closeness to Christ, happiness, that I wondered if I'd been a Christian before. . . .

Another thing Dad said that changed my life: he was always corralling whoever was at hand for whatever activity was going and he had me go in and show slides of Japan to a nursing home. When we were done, he took me aside and said, "How you talk, how you deliver your talk is a matter of faith." Well, I didn't even know that there was a problem. But in many years of Bible studies and teaching those words been a touchstone. I've learned that it's not just about speaking clearly and effectively...one does that because one believes, that faith is the first order of business for a speaker. . . .

When my husband got out of the army we returned to Philadelphia and New Life was exploding. Homosexuals, drug addicts, demon-possessed people were being saved. It was the gospel walking around under many mops of hair.

Dad used his seminary classes to church plant (involving my husband and students in calling all through Abington). All night prayer meetings, weeks of prayer, evangelism weeks. Naturally seminary students were attracted to this and some very able, gifted students and teachers attached themselves to what was called derisively, "Jenkintown pietists" or "David's band of malcontents." Those men and women were God's gift to Dad---they were willing to reach out to the motorcycle gang members and make them part of their families. Mom and Dad set the pace of radical hospitality undergirded by a radical prayer life.

Dad did not want to compete with the other Presbyterian churches in the area, so he started his services at 4:30 in the afternoon in the local gym. Although that is standard venue today, it wasn't then. . . .

Dad had no musical ability. I've never heard him talk about why he wanted guitars and drums and scripture songs (along with hymns), but it was part of welcoming the motorcycle gang types. But more than that, it warmed the cold heart of Reformed worship. It made NL a home for those coming from Africa. It made it NL a place that charismatics could feel at home. It became a staging point for the Reformed faith, renewed by the gospel of grace, to have
wider cultural impact. I would say that is at least part of Dad's lasting legacy.
wider cultural impact. I would say that is at least part of Dad's lasting legacy.
Barbara and Paul and I all have different ways of saying it, but we all see Dad as putting heart, faith, life into a marvelous spiritual heritage that had run a bit dry.

When Dad had a heart attack in Uganda, I was concerned...but he did seem to often have health problems....this was just one more crisis that would resolve itself. But when he had cancer I was in shock, it didn't seem like it was possible. I learned to cry. Mom said that before Dad died, the Lord asked her if she could say, "Thy Kingdom Come," even if He took her husband. At the time and for years after, I couldn't see how that was working...but now I see that so many of the second tier men have been able to come into their own...and there is a certain authority in the words of someone who has gone home. . . .

Dad's lasting legacy: in the fifties if you wanted to live radically for Christ, you could smuggle Bibles into Russia. Or you could do ministry among the gangs. If you wanted to street preach you would have to hang with Baptists and Pentecostals. As they worked on the streets (and thank God they did) druggies and thugs would come to Christ. But the graduate student passing by wouldn't think there was anything for him. And it didn't attract the Great Hearts (Bunyan)---the men with the head and heart capacity to affect the wider culture. Dad taught a generation to do street evangelism, to pray, to worship enthusiastically, to be disciples---to live for Christ---and that it could be exciting and rewarding---and done in such a way that the passing graduate student would at least be impressed...if not converted. Some (many?) of the men and women that he influenced were more gifted than he was---better at teaching, writing, preaching, and staying the course (Dad could be a bit ADHD) and they are the ones that have written the best-sellers. But Dad taught them a new way of doing church. His influence on these men and women is, in my opinion, his lasting legacy.