A Simple Christmas (16 page)

I had started at the Robison organization doing radio spots and later started buying media and doing whatever else they needed me to do, which sometimes included menial tasks like emptying the trash or moving boxes. That was fine by me—I needed the hours and the type and the volume of work didn't matter. Throughout the spring of 1977, I balanced work and school and family as best I could. Robison had an in-house advertising agency that did everything from concept to completion in all sorts of advertising—from radio and TV to billboard creation and placement and print. We had graphic artists on staff (this was in the old days before computers, when artists worked with brushes, pencils, X-acto knives, and acetate overlays). We had people who wrote copy, produced ads, and packaged them. In addition to the obvious in-house work where we handled all advertising and marketing for James Robison, we did work for outside clients ranging from megachurches to parachurch organizations that worked alongside churches with their support and service.

I wrote copy, voiced radio and TV spots, placed all forms of ads for events in all media, and did research that James could use for articles, television, etc. In May of 1977, Gordon Waller, who had launched and directed Focus Advertising Agency, announced that he was leaving to go back to his native Alabama. Much to my surprise, James asked me if I was interested in taking the job of directing Focus Advertising and taking on the title of director of communications for the ministry. With this new job, I would travel with the crusade team to handle press announcements from the stage, and troubleshoot controversies that often arose from negative press during evangelistic meetings.

It was in so many ways the chance of a lifetime. I was just twenty-one years old, married with a not-yet-one-year-old child, and being asked to manage a staff of twelve people and a multimillion-dollar budget. I was the youngest person in the department, but I would oversee it. This was the job I had hoped to land since I was a teenager, but taking on a full-time job would mean leaving seminary.

One of my cherished professors at Southwestern was the late Dr. Oscar Thompson, a professor of evangelism. I asked to visit with him to seek his advice on whether to leave my studies and take this position or to spend the next year and a half completing my master's degree. I fully expected him to tell me that I needed to complete the degree first and not to let anything interrupt my studies.

I'll never forget the conversation. I told him what I had been offered but that it would be full time and would mean I would have to leave school. Dr. Thompson's response was surprising. He simply asked, “What did you come to seminary to train for?”

“A career in some type of Christian broadcasting,” I replied.

“And what job are you being offered?” he asked, as if to say, “How plain does it have to get?” Then he smiled and waited for the obvious answer to sink in to me.

“I suppose if I've come to prepare for the very job I'm being offered, then maybe that's my answer,” I managed to say.

His next piece of advice was classic Oscar Thompson profundity: “Mike, it looks to me as if the Lord is laying this in your lap. You have nothing to lose. It's the job that most people twice your age who already have their degree would die for. Go and do it. If it doesn't work out, I assure you that this seminary will still be sitting on this hill, but that job may not wait for you.”

I never expected a seminary professor to advise me to leave school, but he affirmed for my head what my heart was already telling me.

I took the job and became director of communications for James Robison and the manager of Focus Advertising Agency. By today's standards, my pay would put me under the poverty line, but in 1977, the thirteen-thousand-dollar annual salary was more money than I had ever imagined being able to make.

The offices for James Robison were in Hurst, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth in the Mid-Cities area located between Fort Worth and Dallas. Janet and I had been living near the seminary, at the southwestern part of Fort Worth. In traffic, it could be a forty-five minute drive or longer, and now, since there was no reason for us to live near the seminary campus, we decided it made sense to move closer to where I'd be working. We started looking.

James was willing to take a chance on me and believed that I was worth the risk of taking an untested and unknown twenty-one-year-old and handing him a huge level of responsibility. In the mid-seventies, James Robison's ministry was growing not only in size but also in controversy. He was as plainspoken and eloquent as anyone on the scene, and his bold and unfiltered form of preaching never left the crowd in doubt of where he stood on any given issue. Some reporters dubbed him God's angry prophet because of his calls for repentance and his denouncement of the sins he believed were destroying the nation.

It was unfortunate that many people knew him only from the headlines and didn't have the opportunity that I had to spend time with him one on one in planes, cars, and quiet settings without the public present. In his private life, he was an intense and focused, highly competitive, and very driven individual who genuinely believed that biblical messages should be presented with urgency, and he said he truly felt pain whenever he saw the anguish and anxiety of others. What made me appreciate him was that beneath that sometimes raw, earthy, and even brusque exterior was one of the kindest and most compassionate people I have ever known.

Immediately after I was hired, I was called to James's office by the executive director of the organization, Clayton Spriggs, who would later become like a father to me. I couldn't imagine what I might have done—good or bad—that would warrant an urgent meeting with James. As soon as I arrived in his office, James said, “I need you to come with me.”

We drove to a nice men's clothing store in Hurst, and as we got out of the car, he said, “If you're going to work for me, I want you to look nice and represent me well. Let's get you some decent clothes.”

I still wore the factory-outlet polyester knit suit that I had bought for $12.50, and I'm sure I must have looked like the ultimate country hick, but it was all I had. I was worried that it would take most of my new paycheck to pay for the kind of clothes in this store, which was more upscale than any store I ever had shopped in.

James must have sensed my terror at the thought of being obligated to purchase one or more suits and the accessories to go with it, so he told me, “I'm going to get you outfitted with everything you need to look sharp, and it will be my gift to you because I believe in you.”

Normally, I would have immediately asked if there were any closeouts or out-of-season merchandise that was deeply discounted, but James took control and picked out three very nice suits and then personally selected shirts and ties to match. I would have been overwhelmed had he bought me one suit to replace my factory-outlet special, but I was completely stunned that he was apparently replacing my wardrobe.

Through the years, others may have said unkind things about James Robison, but not in my presence. Like all of us, he was a human being with some flaws, but his heart was as pure and authentic as that of anyone I've known. I will forever count him as a mentor and friend, one who believed in me for no outwardly apparent reason.

As Janet and her newly and nattily dressed husband looked for a place to live, one of the people at the office told us about a new development that was being built in the Mid-Cities area. The developer had purchased large areas of land and created entire neighborhoods with semicustom starter homes in which, even though the floor plan in each home was basically the same, the buyer was able to pick out several of the components, such as the exterior style, brick, roof, paint trim color, interior colors, carpet, and some fixtures. Because an entire street of houses were built at one time, large crews could be kept constantly busy with no downtime or travel time between houses. My friend from work and his wife were in the process of buying one, and he encouraged me to look into it for us.

The thought of our buying a home—and a new one at that—seemed absurd to a couple who struggled to make rent payments, let alone mortgage payments. We decided that it wouldn't hurt or cost us anything to go to the development and look at one of the model homes and at least confront the fact that we couldn't possibly purchase a house.

The houses were 1,200 to 1,300 square feet, with three bedrooms, two baths, an enclosed garage, a nice family room with a fireplace, a lawn, a kitchen with all the appliances, including a dishwasher and refrigerator, and central heat and air-conditioning. Each home was landscaped and the lawn seeded for grass as part of the package.

The Texas economy was on fire at that time, and this developer had found the perfect niche market of mostly young, first-time home buyers. For a mere hundred-dollar deposit, a purchaser could hold one of the houses, apply for a loan that their own finance company would finance, and choose their floor plan, colors, and details.

We laugh about it now, but the $100 was a big deal to us then. What if we didn't get approved and lost our $100? That would be a real setback for us. The total purchase price was $28,500 and the payments would be $288 per month. That wasn't too much more than we'd have to pay in rent for anything decent in the Mid-Cities area, and we'd be doing something at age twenty-one that my parents hadn't been able to do until I was in high school—own the house we lived in. Janet was almost shaking as she wrote the check for the $100 and we made a deposit on a house. The difference between buying a home and renting one was like the difference between putting something in concrete and putting it in sand. It meant that we would be putting down roots and weren't just a couple of crazy kids getting married, but adults who were embarking upon the ultimate symbol of the American dream—owning a home.

We were able to watch as our house was built from the slab up. Neither of us had ever lived in a house that was brand new. It was a long way from the little duplex in Arkadelphia that we had rented just two years earlier for forty dollars a month.

The house was to be ready in early to mid-December, and we could move in then. We applied for the loan and were approved without any problems. Janet's mother gave us new bedroom furniture for Christmas that year, and we used the furniture we had had in our last home for one of the other bedrooms. We would have our master bedroom, John Mark would have a room, and we'd even have a spare guest room for when relatives or friends came. My dad drove to Fort Worth in his pickup truck and rented a U-Haul trailer so we could move what possessions we had to our new home. There is one advantage to not having much—it's much easier to move—and we quickly got everything moved into 7445 Tunbridge Drive in North Richland Hills, Texas, the address of our very first house.

Just in time for Christmas, we had something truly spectacular to celebrate. We were homeowners. We didn't have to ask a landlord if it was okay to trim hedges or put a nail in the wall to hang a picture. We didn't have to worry if the rent would unexpectedly go up when we were least prepared for it. We didn't have to argue over who was responsible for paying to fix a broken toilet or unclog a drain. True, now
we
had to pay for all of this routine maintenance, but we would be paying for it in
our
house, not someone else's. In short, instead of being controlled, we had control, and it felt great. Very grown up and stable.

Our first Christmas in our new house was as special as any we'd had. We threw a Christmas party and invited friends who oohed and aahed that we had such a fresh, new place to dwell. They knew where we had lived before, with chipping paint, splintery wood floors, old fixtures and appliances, and tiny rooms that were drafty cold in the winter unless you stood right by the gas space heater and miserably hot in the summer unless you sat directly in front of the window air conditioner or one of the little electric fans we used to blow air from room to room.

The house on Tunbridge really wasn't that great by most people's standards today. It was structurally sound but obviously wasn't built with Italian marble or handcrafted woodwork, nor was it adorned with authentic Persian rugs or expensive works of art. But to us, it was a little slice of heaven for a young couple who had lived in some places that could best be described as little slices of hell.

Plus, it was great to be able to give John Mark a place to live where we didn't have to worry that the cockroaches were bigger than he was. We truly loved that little house, and to us at the time, it was huge.

In time for Christmas, Janet decorated the brick hearth around the fireplace and hung John Mark's Christmas stocking on the mantle. She found just the Christmas tree she wanted, and my parents gave us some lights and a few ornaments that were surplus from their own collection. And of course, at the top of our tree, we placed the little red cap that a year earlier had sat on John Mark's red head. The hat didn't fit his head anymore, but it fit just perfectly on the top of that tree.

While we always looked forward to going home to Arkansas for Christmas to be with our families, that was one year when it was really hard to pack the car and drive away from a place that we were so grateful to live in. And so grateful to
own
. We had a house.
Our
house. Most people will probably think it strange that we were so thrilled just to have a house, and we admit, it was a pretty simple house. But we were getting really used to being happy with simple things. And this house made Christmas really special—a special but simple Christmas!