Messages spoken at various Camps Farthest Out by Henry Adams.
Henry Adams was a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, layman who spent twelve years in state government before stepping away from his career in 1972 to live by faith with his wife, Ellie. Born in Harlem and raised in Pittsburgh, he met Jesus during a Faith Alive mission at his Episcopal church in 1968. Over the years that followed, Henry went from the governor’s office to vacuuming a Bible camp tabernacle and driving elderly people to medical appointments, convinced that any work could be done for Jesus. In 1977 he taught at the Nebraska CFO at Hastings College.
Henry was born in Harlem and raised in Pittsburgh, the son of parents from Trinidad. For a time, he said, his parents “worshipped in a black Jewish congregation.” Henry later served in an Army band at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, before beginning a career with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. “I had started in 1960 as a minor clerk, clerk two, near Pittsburgh because that’s where I was raised.”
He eventually moved to Harrisburg and worked in the governor’s office in personnel and administration. He also became president of the Harrisburg Jaycees. Henry was active in the Episcopal Church too. He sang in the choir, served on the vestry and diocesan council, and attended the Episcopal General Convention. By every outward measure, he was deeply involved in church. But in 1968 he discovered that being involved in church and knowing Jesus were not necessarily the same thing.
In October 1968 Henry’s Episcopal church held a Faith Alive lay witness mission. That Saturday morning some of the visiting team gathered at the Adams home. Ellie was suffering from phlebitis and could not put any weight on one leg. The group prayed for her. By the evening meeting, Henry said, “she was able to walk on her leg. In fact, we left the crutches in the car.”
That night the mission coordinator met Henry at the head of the aisle and asked him a direct question: “Do you know Jesus Christ is your personal savior?” Henry thought he wanted to, but there was a problem. “I did not believe I was a sinner.”
What he heard that night changed his understanding of sin. “I didn’t realize that sin was not what you do, but a condition.” Henry knelt and gave himself to Christ. At the same time, elsewhere in the church, someone was leading Ellie to the altar. Neither knew what the other was doing.
The following morning, Henry said, “we were the two brightest things in church.” He wrote to his seventy-three-year-old father about what had happened, and his father came to Christ through the letter. Henry also decided to be baptized by immersion. The circumstances were unusual enough that he remembered them years later. “I was baptized by my Episcopal priest in a Baptist church one night.” As far as Henry knew, nothing like it had happened before in his diocese.
In September 1972 Henry left state government after twelve years and began what became an almost four-year experiment in trusting God for the family’s needs. He had been working on minority employment for the state, helping develop what became the Governor’s Task Force on Equal Rights and serving as its staff director. When the program was reorganized, Henry expected to have about six weeks to find another position.
Instead, he found himself looking at Matthew 6 and Jesus’ words about food, clothing, and the Father’s care. “I’m stepping out of state government after 12 years on these scriptures.” The next job did not appear. His retirement money carried the family for eight or nine months. Then that was gone. His brother sent a check. Other provision came as it was needed. For nearly four years, Henry said, “we walked by faith. And the Lord took care of us every day.” That experience became the foundation of his later teaching on living by faith.
Living by faith was not a romantic idea for the Adams family. Sometimes it meant reaching the point where they could see no way out. At one point they went three months without paying the mortgage. Eventually a sheriff’s notice arrived. With about a week remaining before the final date, Henry believed the Lord told him to tell his mother-in-law what was happening. Until then, she had known nothing about their situation. She responded by taking a mortgage on her own house to pay theirs.
Another time Henry and Ellie were preparing to leave for a diocesan youth retreat. Money was tight, but a friend had been praying for them. She believed God showed her that they had enough money for the trip but did not have meat at home. She arrived with a large bag of frozen beef. When the Adamses looked in their freezer, there was one pound of hamburger left.
Henry and Ellie also learned that living by faith did not mean sitting still and waiting for someone else to provide. For three consecutive years they attended the camp meeting at Elam Bible Institute in New York. One year they arrived with enough money either to eat for two weeks or to pay for a place to sleep for two weeks—but not both. They had offered to work. Henry was assigned four hours a day vacuuming the tabernacle. Ellie cleaned restrooms and nurseries.
For a man who had worked in the governor’s office, vacuuming a tabernacle might have looked like a long way down. Henry did not see it that way. “I wanted that rug clean for Jesus.” Ellie approached her work in much the same spirit. She was then state president of Women’s Aglow Fellowship, but at eight in the morning she could be found cleaning and singing praises to Jesus. Titles mattered less to the Adamses than the One for whom the work was being done.
By 1977 Henry was driving a van for the Office of Aging in Harrisburg, taking elderly people to doctors and medical appointments. It was far removed from his former position in state government, but Henry found another ministry waiting for him there. “I can’t do anything other than just share Jesus with them.”
He said a number of the people who rode with him came to Christ. Some were elderly Jewish women, and Henry said some of them “have now met their Messiah.” He had attended a Messianic Jewish conference at Messiah College in Grantham, and before long a prayer meeting had begun among the van drivers in the morning. Once again, Henry had discovered that his ministry was not dependent upon having a religious job.
In July 1977 Henry and his family came to Hastings College for the Nebraska CFO. He shared the teaching with Hal Hill, who introduced him to the campers. “Henry is from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And when he lays the Scripture out, he comes alive.” Henry told the story of his years in government, meeting Jesus, and the long period when he and Ellie learned to depend upon God one need at a time. He taught from Romans 8:29 about being conformed to the image of Christ and about doing everything unto the Lord.
That was no abstraction for him. He had tried to do government work unto the Lord. He had vacuumed a tabernacle unto the Lord. He had driven elderly people to their appointments unto the Lord. During the week, the Council Ring also asked him to lead a service of water baptism. The subject was already on his heart. He taught the campers about baptism from Hebrews 6:1–2. “The Lord had gotten me up at one o’clock last night and wrote up a thing on baptism.”
At his final session Henry thanked the Council Ring not only for inviting him, but “for bringing our whole family here.” It was fitting that the family had come together. The faith Henry taught at Hastings was the same faith he and Ellie had been living together since 1968—through answered prayer, an uncertain mortgage, an almost empty freezer, unexpected provision, and whatever work God put in front of them. For Henry Adams, living by faith had become less about what job he held than about whom he was serving. “I wanted that rug clean for Jesus.”
*Note:
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