Called to Controversy (45 page)

A barely audible gasp escaped from a church member who had been chatting with Moishe, Richard, and Susan—all of whom he had just met for the first time. Mark Greene, also a Jewish believer in Jesus, was on staff at London Bible College,
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a school closely affiliated with the church. At Richard's request, he had spoken to the pastor about inviting the team to come to Bushey Baptist. And it had been quite a plum for the team to find a welcome at this vibrant and highly respected church.

Mark was not prepared to hear a missionary ask people to
leave
a church. Shocking!
And had that Harvey bloke actually gone to call the police?

Mark's shock turned to fascination as he watched Moishe trundle the two out the door without laying a hand on them. With each step the hefty American took, the young men had to back up to avoid being bumped by his sizeable abdomen, which preceded the rest of him by at least ten inches. Before long, two frustrated and somewhat bewildered protesters found themselves outside the doors, which were now blocked by the outsized mission leader.

Soon the police arrived. They listened to the antimissionaries' accusations, then heard from Richard, who explained the type of adversarial relationship they'd had with him, and his reasons for supposing they had come to disrupt the meeting.

“That's rubbish,” the more vocal of the two insisted. “We have every right to be here.”

“Actually, you don't,” one of the bobbies said calmly. “This isn't Speaker's Corner, is it?”

The other added, “If they don't want to grant you access to their meeting, they don't have to. That's perfectly legal.'”

Dejected but still determined, the two stopped just outside the church's property.

Mark wondered aloud at how Moishe had handled the situation; having unbelievers removed from the church seemed rather an odd way of conducting missionary work, after all.

Moishe took a chair next to Mark and said earnestly. “I appreciate your wanting to share the gospel in this or any situation,” he said, “and your heart for evangelism is why we've invited you to the board meeting tomorrow. But you have to understand that these men did not come to hear the gospel. They were not interested. They came with a position and a purpose, and that purpose was to disrupt.
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Some Jewish people came tonight to hear what we had to say. These guys wanted to prevent that from happening. They're wolves. And a shepherd doesn't let the wolves meet the sheep.”

As Mark listened, his skepticism began to melt away.

The hour passed quickly enough, and as the notes of the final song faded, the pastor returned to the platform to make final remarks. Mark Greene slipped back to the lobby in time to hear Moishe ask Richard, “Are our friends still out there?”

Richard checked and found that they were.

Moishe did not seem surprised. “Here's what we'll do. You and Susan go out and begin engaging them in conversation. Keep them occupied as people leave. If they're busy arguing with you, they won't buttonhole anyone who came to hear the group. Got it?”

Richard and Susan grinned. Mark, once again observing the mission leader's tactics, was impressed. “Brilliant!” he said as he, too, smiled approvingly, and he promised Moishe that he would be at the board meeting the next day.

Years later as Mark Greene recounted the story, he said of Moishe's strategy: “It was countercultural, but it was biblical. It was a tremendously smart, biblical response, just like Paul [when he said], ‘I'm a citizen of Rome.' He was using the law [to his advantage].” Mark not only attended the board meeting, but became a member, and soon afterward, the chairman of the board of Jews for Jesus in the UK.

Moishe was a master at using the law to his advantage, but he also learned to use other people's procedures to his advantage, as the following story shows.

Moishe was an early advocate of desktop computers, but when at one point the organization had seven of the latest and supposedly greatest computers at the headquarters office, Moishe recalled,

Unlike the earlier models, they were subject to continual breakdowns. The repairman would come out and the same machine might freeze up the next day. And since all but one of these machines was subject to the same problem, I asked [the company] to replace them . . . but the dealer argued and the company just stonewalled us. I filed a lawsuit.

When it was apparent that we were getting nowhere, I personally bought a hundred and seventy five shares of stock—it was priced low enough at the time. The next time we got together for one of these negotiating stints, I made a point of saying, “Now I understand that stockholders can come to the board of directors meeting, is that right? And if they ask in advance, they'll be given a certain amount of time to speak . . . I bought 175 shares of [your] stock.”

But then I found out that you had to have more stock to attend the meeting and I bought another 225 shares. Then I told the attorneys that I intended to come to the next stockholders' meeting and express my displeasure with the way they chose to treat their customers. Within 48 hours, [the company] and the dealers settled the case and we had seven of their latest desktop computers to replace the “lemons.”

I completely forgot to sell the stock afterwards. One day I realized I had 400 shares that were worth almost ten times what I'd paid. But that is the story of my life; if I ever made any money, it was by mistake.

In describing his role during that era, Moishe said,

From about 1980 through 1995, I was chiefly working as a strategist, trying to discern the best places to spend my energy and the energy of Jews for Jesus. [But] by the nineties, my chief role was that of a fireman. I had pretty much taught the staff all that I could teach them in doing the work, and a lot of my new work was putting out fires, making things work according to their principles and practices.

Moishe's reflections on his “fireman” role in the 1990s mainly pertained to his work within Jews for Jesus. Yet he still liked to help other people get things started and encouraged numerous groups and individuals in their own ministries. He took an especially active interest in creative people who were longing to tell others about Jesus. It didn't matter that they were not part of the Jews for Jesus staff; in fact, Moishe tended to be more generous with those who he thought could do better by remaining separate and distinct from Jews for Jesus.

That was certainly the case with Sally Klein O'Connor and her husband, Michael. Michael wrote brilliant lyrics, and his singer/songwriter wife, a Jewish believer in Jesus, sang with power, passion, and a vulnerability that was truly unique. Moishe first heard Sally sing in autumn 1989 at a Jews for Jesus conference; she had been invited to perform a song that she and Michael had written called “Improbable People for Impossible Tasks.” The crowd was bowled over by the song's calypso beat, humor, and biblical message. Sally recalled,

The following day I was “summoned.” I had never met Moishe before, [though] I had heard little bits and pieces about him from friends who were on staff with Jews for Jesus. . . . I had no idea that I stood on the precipice of tremendous change in my life. He never said hello or introduced himself, but just got straight to the point. He liked the song very much and wanted to know if I had ever recorded an album.

He could not have known how burned out I was on that subject . . . I could still taste the bitterness of years of rejection as a singer and songwriter. I tried to answer politely: “No.”

He told her that she should do an album and offered her the funds to make the recording.

She said,

Two weeks later, true to his word, a check arrived for $1,500. In the memo Moishe had notated “for album.” I tacked it above my piano and just stared at it for two weeks. I couldn't believe it was real. My dad finally told me to deposit it.

Moishe insisted on a deadline . . . the truth was, without a deadline we might never have finished that first album. I wondered how Moishe knew.

Moishe also suggested that Sally come to San Francisco with her husband and daughter for a concert. They were well received, and a generous “pass the plate” offering was given to them, since there had been no charge for the concert. Moishe surprised Michael and Sally by announcing to the audience that the couple was recording an album—and that they could take pre-orders for the album that very night.

Later that evening, Moishe took Sally aside and talked about her and Michael starting their own ministry. He envisioned them traveling across the country, reaching people with their music. After the couple returned to Southern California, Moishe called Sally, continuing to encourage her to step out in faith and use her God-given gifts. And six months later, Improbable People Ministries was born.

Some of Sally's good friends from Jews for Jesus later left the organization and spoke to her of how they had been hurt by Moishe. A deeply compassionate person, she commented, “I cannot ignore what has been said to me. But neither can I forget the integrity Moishe showed to us in all of his dealings with and for us. The longer I stay in ministry, the more clearly I see we don't understand everything that is going on.”

Commenting on the degree of hurt and anger that some former staff members expressed, Moishe said,

What I've noticed is when people leave a ministry, which, like marriage, has a high degree of commitment, that if they're dismissed they tend to try to get along with the ministry afterward. But if they leave of their own accord, inevitably, eventually they turn against that ministry. It's as though they need to justify the separation. . . .

I hope that I am not a person who holds grudges—I don't want to be. And if somebody's angry at me, I don't necessarily think that they are wrong to be angry at me. Sometimes I'm angry at me.

In fifty-four years of knowing Moishe, I never saw him as a person who held grudges, but I did see him adamant in his mistrust once a person showed himself or herself to be less than trustworthy in his eyes. He was sometimes quite vocal in expressing that mistrust. He seemed to feel obligated to point it out so that others would not be taken in, not realizing that he was alienating some people who might not want to hear about the matter. And in the few instances where he expressed not merely distrust but actual dislike for an individual, his feelings came through in a way that generated dislike in return.

Research for this book provided unique opportunities to discuss some of these issues. I told him that I had observed in him a tendency to polarize his views of certain people, which didn't seem to allow for “gray areas” where a person might not be as good or as bad as he thought. He paused, looking thoughtful, then replied with an eye opening insight: “Eventually, most people become heroes and villains in my mind. There are not too many villains, but a person who had villain-[like] traits becomes a villain. And a person who has heroic traits [becomes a hero]. It's a tendency to filter things out and assign [what seems like a dominant] quality to them. That's always been a problem.”

Moishe did not see himself as a hero or a villain—but he made provisions to guard against his human failings, just as he tried to guard against the failings of others. He said:

I've always found that I had to protect the organization against myself, and I set up different safeguards to do that.
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But I also found that I had to set up the safeguards in the organization to protect the organization and its purposes from staff who [could be tempted to] change things for their own benefit at the expense of getting the task done.

Just as Moishe's views of certain people tended to become polarized, many people's views of him tended toward the same polarization.

Moishe continued to speak his mind bluntly and without regard to what others wanted to hear. He sometimes joked that he was an equal opportunity offender, but he always saw himself as a combination of the boy pointing out that the emperor had no clothes and what he called “a natural born agitator.”

One arena in which he was considered an agitator was that of messianic congregations, that is, local bodies of Jewish Jesus-believers who chose to have a community of worship that reflected their Jewish upbringing. In fact, Moishe was a great proponent of messianic congregations; he deeply appreciated Jewish liturgy and worship services where Jewish visitors could recognize that believing in Jesus did not mean a rejection of all things Jewish.