Ship's Kids and A Change of Heart

My mom had been wanting to start a program like King’s Kids on the ship. A professional dancer named Paula Kirby joined us and agreed to be the choreographer. Ship’s Kids was born. We began with a special Christmas program at a local theater. But Ship’s Kids posed a bit of embarrassment for me. I had fairly sweaty palms and there were parts of some dances when we had to hold another person’s hand. So I would get an “ewww” from the girls.

Paula would also often tell me to put my head up straight. It didn’t seem to me that I was looking down so I didn’t know what she was talking about. But I would just tilt my chin up and carry on. It wasn’t until years later that I finally understood what she was talking about.

The problem was that I have strabismus or what my parents called a lazy eye. If I tilt my head to the left, one of my eyes wanders off a bit. Over the years, I unconsciously developed a habit of tilting my head to the right so it wouldn’t wander. Later, I found out that some people thought I tilted my head to be cool. I’m not sure how that would help me to be so. But I finally realized, long after the fact, that Paula was trying to get me to tilt my head up to the left to get it straight.

Meanwhile, my father was still leading street outreaches to the towns up and down the coast. The Greek Orthodox Church has a very strong hold on Greek society and they are very opposed to proselytism - seeking to convert people to another religion. In its basic tenets, the Orthodox Church has some good theology as a branch of Christianity but they have added many traditions to the faith not in the Bible.

The Bible calls Christianity “true religion”. However, in most people’s minds, religion has taken on a very different meaning. It has become defined as a system of beliefs for people trying to make it to a blissful state of being - be it heaven or nirvana or something else. There are certain things you have to do or not do in order to make it. In Christian “religion” people have to follow certain rules found in the Bible (and/or in whatever the tradition of Christianity one happens to follow) in order to be good enough for God to let them into heaven. It is Man trying to reach God.

True Christianity is not a religion in that sense. Instead, it is the belief that God is reaching to Man. It is the belief that every person is born with a sinful nature passed down to us from Adam. Not only do we have a sinful nature, we have also chosen to defy our conscience and take action in sinning willfully. Because of these things, we have been separated from a holy God and we can never be good enough to please Him. So God made a plan to reconcile us. Jesus fulfilled that plan.

Under the influence of the Orthodox Church, the police tried to oppose the street outreaches my father was leading. They tried to counter what they considered proselytism by shutting the meetings down. My father would tell them that he was not trying to change people’s religion but help lead them to a change of heart.

One day he was leading a street outreach in the city of Corinth (where the apostle Paul from the Bible spent some time). Due to the continued police harassment, they had come up with a code word to trigger everyone to scatter if need be. Sure enough, the police came to break up the meeting. My dad gave the code word and everyone split. 

As on other occasions, the police took my dad and mom to the police station and this police chief was especially harsh. He was trying to intimidate my father but he didn’t speak English very well. He told my dad, 

“I can put you in jail and take away all your clothes”. My dad quietly replied, 

“Well, as long as you put my wife and I in the same cell”.

There was another particular outreach occasion that had far-reaching effects, years into the future. One day my father was leading the team in the town of Meghara and a 16-year-old young man named Kostas responded to the appeal. While proselytism is discouraged in general, it is against the law to proselytize a minor in Greece. Again, we weren’t seeking to change people’s religion, just foster a change of heart.

Kostas’s parents were divorced and he lived with his dad. He was beginning a new life as a Christian and he wanted to be around us. He would come to visit and hang out in Kinetta. His dad saw the positive changes in Kostas’s life and he was fine with it all.

Kostas’s mother was a different story. She protested vehemently. When she found out about us, she was concerned that we were a cult who were going to abduct Kostas and take him away from Greece. She got the media involved who reported as much. Sadly, we had to tell Kostas that he could not visit us anymore. Fortunately, we had connected him with a good church in Athens under the leadership of a pastor named Costas Macris who used to be a missionary overseas. Kostas did come to visit us when we eventually left Greece but this was not the last time we were going to have trouble over this “change of heart”.

Ships Kids