A Closer Walk with God

Gentle summer breezes played along the shoreline of Green Lake, Wis., across the rolling carpet of the 18-hole golf course, the tennis courts, the spacious yacht basin. But not the click of a driver was heard, or a splash from the water. Sitting on folding chairs under the oak trees were 800-odd men, women and children celebrating with hymns, prayers and well-chosen words the tenth anniversary of a summer gathering place for American (Northern) Baptists.

Sitting near the 45-voice choir, staring modestly down at the grass when speakers praised him, was Dr. Luther Wesley Smith, 56, executive secretary of the American Baptist Assembly. Dr. Smith had many occasions to avert his eyes, for in last week's celebration the Baptists at Green Lake were honoring him, too.

In 1941, when Massachusetts-born Dr. Smith was chief of education (63 schools, colleges and seminaries) and publications for the American Baptists, he found Sunday-school enrollments sadly sagging. He discovered that the three denominations staging the strongest Sunday-school comeback (Southern Baptist. Presbyterian and Methodist) all had summer assemblies at which youth leaders and ministers could meet. Deciding that his own denomination should have one as well, he spent two years scouring Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana for the proper setting. What he found was the 1,100-acre estate of Victor F. Lawson, publisher of the Chicago Daily News, converted after Lawson's death into a country club that went out of business in the Depression. The Baptists took it over for a trifling $300,000 (current evaluation: about $11,000,000 ), and converted it into one of the most luxurious church centers in the U.S.: an 81 -room hotel was already standing, the "largest barn in Wisconsin" became an 800-seat auditorium, an old hog barn became a 22-bedroom residence and dormitory. The result was a kind of apogee of the nature-loving, creature-comfortable Christianity for which the U.S. is noted. "Beauty, godliness and away-from-the-city fellowship," according to Smith, lead Green Lakers to "a closer walk with God" (in the words of their favorite hymn). Says Smith: "Business calls its conferences in places where it can press the total impact of its message. Why not religion? Here one can look at life whole and steadily under the impact of God's beauty."

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