Messages spoken at various Camps Farthest Out by Glenn Crafts.
The Rev. Glenn Crafts was a United Methodist minister in western New York for more than thirty years. He served as a Navy chaplain during the Second World War, started a church in the basement of a parsonage after the war, and later saw his congregation in Syracuse come into renewal. He spoke at Camps Farthest Out in New York from 1976 into the 1990s.
He had a gift for making serious things simple. He could talk about prayer without making it sound complicated, about surrender without making it sound like defeat, and about coming to God without first getting yourself cleaned up.
Glenn Alty was born at Allens Hill, New York, on November 29, 1918, the youngest of three children. His father, Thomas Alty, was a Methodist minister. “My parents prayed. I can’t remember life without somebody praying.”
Sundays were serious business. “I was scrubbed fore and aft, neck and ears, and everything I put on was clean, clean, clean, and most of it was starch.” His father could point to the exact spot where his own life had changed. Glenn never had such a moment. He grew up around the church, around prayer, and around ministry, but his own journey with God took longer to become personal. In the late 1950s he took his mother’s maiden name, Crafts.
Glenn went to Alfred University, and one of the best things that happened there was meeting Betty. “I went to Alfred University. One of the best things that happened to me there was that that’s where I met Betty.”
He went to chapel almost every day because he knew Betty would be there. Years later he discovered that the reason she went was much the same. “And it was only a couple of years ago that I found out the reason she went was because she knew I was going to be there.”
They married in 1941 and eventually had four sons and a daughter. Glenn trained at Colgate Rochester Divinity School. During the Second World War he served as a U.S. Navy chaplain, holding the rank of lieutenant from 1944 to 1946.
After the war, Glenn started a church from almost nothing. Christ Methodist Church began in the basement of a parsonage in Snyder, outside Buffalo, and he remained its senior minister until 1965. He went on to pastor churches in Rochester and Terre Haute, Indiana. But somewhere in all those years of ministry, he discovered an embarrassing truth: he did not really know how to pray.
“For years and years and years, I didn’t know how to pray. I mean, long after I was supposed to know how to pray.” That admission tells you something about Glenn. He was not interested in pretending that being a minister meant he had everything figured out.
In June 1971 he went to Erwin Methodist Church in Syracuse, near the university. “And when I went to Syracuse, I was pretty cocky.” The church was barely hanging on. Glenn was given one text: “I will build my church.” He came to understand that God was saying something rather different than what he had expected. “What he was saying was, really, Glenn, get out of my way. I’d rather do it myself.”
That fall a man named Fred Savage came to Glenn’s office. Years earlier Fred had tried to tell him about life in the Holy Spirit. This time Glenn listened. The congregation began to experience renewal. There were conversions and healings, and Glenn made sure everything was done decently and in good order. He gave an altar call at every service. Evelyn Carter Spencer came and preached there.
Glenn had also learned to stop taking himself so seriously. “Like every other Christian, I’m under construction. You’ve seen those signs? Under construction. General contractor Jesus.” He had once spent a great deal of energy defending God. “For a long time, I was keeping God. I mean that. I was defending God for the world.” He eventually realized God did not need him to be His defense attorney.
Glenn’s first CFO speaking week was at Silver Bay, probably in 1976, alongside Hal Hill. The campers had traveled a long way to hear Hal. “So they put me on four times in a row with a great group filling this room, who had come a long way and paid a lot of money to hear Hal Hill.”
He kept coming back. That same year he and Alex McCullough led a week on Long Island during a hurricane. It was Alex’s first time speaking at a CFO camp. “First time I ever spoke at a CFO was in 1976 in my own camp. Glenn Crafts was the other speaker.”
Glenn returned to Silver Bay in 1980 and 1993 and also spoke at Warwick, Stony Point, and the Golden Jubilee. He led a creative Bible study at Silver Bay, but it was the prayer groups he loved most. “Prayer is the very center of the CFO program.”
Glenn and Betty liked to walk up creeks together, hand in hand. They had to keep each other from falling in. That was a good picture of their marriage. One night, after a busy day, they were settling down to sleep. Betty reached over and patted Glenn on the shoulder. “I love you.” Glenn answered simply: “I know.” They had been married for decades by then. There was no need to make the moment bigger than it was.
After Syracuse, Glenn continued serving churches in western New York, including Springville in Erie County. He retired in 1982, and he and Betty moved to Warsaw. They opened their home to a prayer group. In 1991 they celebrated fifty years of marriage with a trip to England, Scotland, and Wales.
Glenn’s teaching was full of the kind of lines people remembered because they sounded like something a real person would say. He told people to bring God their worst, not their best. “But it took me a long, long time to realize that I really can come to him with my worst.”
Then he put it even more plainly: “And I don’t have to say, but Lord, let me take a bath. He says, I’ll take you dirty.” He expected people to pray for real answers. “I’ve discovered that in church, it’s perfectly all right to pray for the sick as long as nobody gets well.”
And when people asked for more of God, he wanted them to stop asking timidly. “Don’t just stand there and say, fill my cup, Lord. Come with the whole bucket.” He laughed a lot. He even called it a gift. “God has given me the gift of the holy giggles.”
He did not want people wasting their time arguing about religion. “Don’t argue religion. It’s a waste of time. It’s the devil’s game. It’s strictly no win.” He wanted them to look at Jesus instead.
For Glenn, surrender did not mean giving up. It meant giving over. That distinction mattered to him. God was not asking people to quit; He was asking them to put their lives into His hands.
He taught forgiveness the same way. We cannot manufacture forgiveness out of our own resources. It is something Christ gives us. He compared it to writing a check on someone else’s account. “And the crux of it is down on the bottom line, don’t sign your name. Sign his name.”
He also had congregations say aloud who they were in Christ: “I am a Bible-believing, Born again, Spirit-filled, Blood-washed, Heaven-bound, Child of God, I am a joint heir with Jesus Of the whole kingdom of heaven.”
The boy who had grown up in a starch-stiffened Sunday suit, the young minister who admitted he did not know how to pray, and the pastor who once thought he had to defend God had learned something much simpler. Come as you are. Come dirty. Pray for something to happen. Let Jesus do the building. Glenn Crafts died in Warsaw, New York, on August 16, 1995, at seventy-six.
*Note:
Many speakers lived before the days of the internet and many had very limited biographical information available. The information in these biographies came mostly from transcripts of their messages, and relies heavily on their own spoken words. Please contact us if you have any corrections.