Messages spoken at various Camps Farthest Out by Dr. Frank Laubach.
Frank Laubach was a missionary, educator, and author whose literacy work eventually reached people in more than a hundred countries. He became known for the “Each One Teach One” method of teaching people to read and write, but the work grew out of a much more personal experience.
In 1930, at the age of forty-five, Laubach was serving among the Moro people on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. One night on a hill above Lanao, he came to the realization that he did not truly love the people he had come to serve. That experience changed his life. It also led to a deeper practice of prayer that he called “The Game of Minutes,” in which he tried to remain conscious of God throughout every minute of the day.
Laubach never claimed a dramatic call to missionary work. Instead, he reasoned that he should go where the need was greatest. He described his thinking in military terms. He wanted to go where the “ranks were thin,” where “the battle was being lost,” and where “the need was greatest and the danger was greatest.” In 1915, that meant going to Mindanao to work among the Moros, a Muslim people among whom there had been years of conflict with the United States. Laubach wanted to reach them through Christianity rather than force. He went to try Christ’s way of winning them—the way of love and prayer.
Laubach eventually hoped to become president of the seminary in Manila, but he was passed over for the position. He asked to be sent back among the Moros, believing that he might never be known beyond that isolated part of the Philippines. Instead, he found that even there he was not succeeding. One night he climbed Signal Hill above Lanao. He had gone there to complain to God, but during the night he became aware of something wrong in his own attitude toward the people he was trying to serve. He described what happened as though God spoke directly to him:
“My child, my lips said, You’ll fail because you really do not love these Moros. You feel superior to them because you’re white. If you can forget that you’re an American and think only that I love them, they’ll respond.” Laubach responded with a complete surrender of his own plans. “I hate myself. My plans have all gone to pieces. Drive me out of myself and come and take possession of me, and think thy thoughts in my mind.” He later described that night as the moment when he became “color blind.” “In that terrible, wonderful hour on Signal Hill, I became color blind.”
His relationship with the Moro people changed. He began studying the Koran with Moro priests and developed relationships that had previously seemed impossible. The experience also changed his understanding of himself. “I was a dud. I don’t think I was worth my salt until that thing happened on Signal Hill until I fell in love.”
Laubach returned to Signal Hill another night and spent hours thinking about the wrong things he had done during the previous twenty years. He refused to record the specific things he confessed, but he did record what he believed God said to him afterward: “Ah, little child, I have hurt you tonight, and now I feel sorry for you. All you have confessed to me is true, but I love you still.” That understanding of God’s love became central to the rest of Laubach’s life.
Laubach’s literacy ministry began during a difficult period. The Great Depression had reduced the funding available to his mission, leaving him without the staff he needed. Then a Moro chief offered a practical solution. “I’ll make everybody who knows how to read, teach somebody else, or I’ll kill him.” Laubach took the idea and developed it into what became known as “Each One Teach One.” A person who learned to read would immediately teach someone else. The method spread far beyond Mindanao. Eventually, Laubach’s literacy programs reached more than a hundred countries. His approach was simple enough to be used by ordinary people rather than requiring a large staff of professional teachers.
The literacy work became one of the most lasting parts of Laubach’s ministry.
The same year that brought his experience on Signal Hill also brought another important change in Laubach’s spiritual life. He began practicing what he called “The Game of Minutes.” He knew he could not maintain perfect awareness of God every second, so he treated the practice as a game rather than as a test he could either pass or fail. His rule was simple: “At one second out of the minute. If you capture that second in the minute. You win the minute. And if you don’t. You lost that minute. That is time to smile and start over again.” He kept track of his progress almost like a baseball player keeping a batting average.
“Nobody ever succeeded. That I have met yet. But nobody ever failed.” Laubach based the practice on Paul’s instruction to “pray without ceasing.” He also wanted prayer to become a two-way conversation rather than simply a list of requests. “But I open my lips and let them idle, and he talks to me.” He recorded the beginning of this experiment in his journal: “July the 2nd, 1930. The newest experiment, and at present the most thrilling. is letting God talk through my tongue.”
The practice produced what Laubach called “flash prayers”—short prayers that could be offered throughout the day. He encouraged others to use them as well, and they became a familiar part of his teaching at Camps Farthest Out.
Laubach believed that Christian growth required continually beginning again. Speaking at a Camp, he said that the command to be born again was not enough for him. “That verse. You must be born again. Wasn’t long enough for me.” He wanted two additional words: “I need two more words. Again and again.” He admired Glenn Clark‘s vision for prayer and the Camps Farthest Out. Of Clark he said: “Glenn Clark dreamed of belting the world with prayer.” Laubach shared that vision in his own way, through literacy, prayer, and the practice of bringing God into every minute of ordinary life.
Laubach also spent time working in New Guinea among people who had formerly practiced cannibalism. He said that they helped him understand the Lord’s Supper in a way he had not understood it before. “The only person who ever offered himself voluntarily to be eaten was Jesus Christ.” He connected that idea with Christ’s desire to enter into the lives of His followers. “He offers himself to get into ourselves. His flesh broken for us, his blood poured out for us, so that his spirit might enter our spirit.” Laubach regarded this as one of the deepest meanings of the cross.
Laubach also spoke about healing, particularly the connection between resentment and physical illness. He used his own experience with arthritis as an example. He believed that resentment he carried toward another person had contributed to his condition. “If I’ve had a little trouble with arthritis in my left leg, it’s because I hated that guy.” At a healing Camp in Oklahoma, Laubach emphasized repentance rather than presenting himself as a healer. “If you get well in our bodies, it’s going to be because you got well in our souls, in our minds. I don’t know all the things that make people sick, but I know that hate does.”
His answer to resentment was to turn his attention toward Jesus. “I turn to Jesus and say, oh Jesus, I love you, I love you, I love you. Sometimes I have to say it 25 times, sometimes 50.” Laubach did not consider himself a faith healer. “People have given me credit for when I prayed for them, their diseases were healed. Well, I didn’t know it was going to happen or did happen until later, but I don’t pray to have that gift.” He was more comfortable directing people to Agnes Sanford when they were specifically looking for healing ministry.
Laubach’s writings grew out of his own experiences in prayer and ministry. Letters by a Modern Mystic began as letters he wrote to his father during the Signal Hill period. He also wrote Channels of Spiritual Power, The Autobiography of Jesus, and Christ Liveth in Me, which was published with The Game of Minutes. His work took him throughout the Philippines, New Guinea, India, Africa, and Latin America. He eventually became president and later president emeritus of the Koinonia Foundation. At Camps Farthest Out, he shared the platform with many other well-known Christian teachers, including Roland Brown, Glenn Harding, Louise Eggleston, and Starr Daily.
The experience on Signal Hill in 1930 remained at the center of Frank Laubach’s life. He had gone to the hill believing that his problems were caused by circumstances, other people, and his own failures. He came down with a different understanding: he needed to love the people God had sent him to serve.
From that experience came a ministry that taught millions of people to read, a method of prayer that encouraged people to turn toward God throughout every minute of the day, and a lifetime of teaching about the love of Jesus Christ. Laubach spent the rest of his life trying to live out the lesson he learned on that hill: to love God, to love people, and to begin again whenever he failed.
*Note:
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