THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610180062
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG LENGTH: 163 lines
THE VOICE is not particularly memorable. Perhaps, then, it's the delivery that moves men.
But that, too, seems ordinary when Dick Woodward speaks.
Ordinary. Comfortable. Yes, that's it. Woodward makes the Bible comfortable.
Twenty years ago, Woodward was arguably the best-known preacher in Hampton Roads. His weekly prayer breakfasts drew nearly 400 businessmen to the now-defunct Diamond Club in Norfolk, and he was a fixture on local TV and in Bible study classes.
Today, Woodward smiles in the same down-home way, and nods. ``God did this.''
The nod is virtually the only gesture Woodward can make these days. Paralyzed from a degenerative spinal disease, bedridden in his Williamsburg home, Woodward is about to give up his weekly Bible class and guest preaching at the church he used to pastor. It will be the final nod to a 40-year career of personal preaching and counseling.
But that voice will still be heard. To a potential radio audience of 2.7 billion people around the world, Woodward teaches the Bible. Every day, somewhere, Woodward's comfortable voice is telling how to apply the Bible to daily life, via the 180 audio and videotapes he recorded, let's see, how many years ago? Fourteen? In September, seven American television stations began broadcasting Woodward tapes. On Oct. 7, three new radio stations started broadcasting audio tapes, this time to a local market.
Stations in Chesapeake, Smithfield and Hampton will broadcast the voice of Woodward explaining the Word of God. And it will be good.
The broadcasts were begun by a group of local businessmen who attended those legendary Woodward prayer breakfasts. They were so impressed that they wanted to send Woodward's gospel message around the world. They have done so, in 12 languages.
``There were five of us that originally started doing the translation,'' said Dois I. Rosser Jr., a Hampton businessman and chairman of International Cooperating Ministries. ``We took it on as a ministry to broadcast them in various countries. That had two purposes: one, to broadcast Dick's teachings and two, to build churches as a result of the response that came to the radio.''
Since 1987, Rosser said, 234 churches have been built. All because of Woodward. All because of those prayer breakfasts.
``His impact from a wheelchair in Williamsburg, Virginia, is beyond our comprehension,'' Rosser said.
At one time the breakfasts drew many of the area's most prominent businessmen. Woodward hasn't personally held a prayer breakfast since the late 1970s. But again, remarkably, his voice will continue.
Woodward's protege, Bob Boyd, has organized a new areawide prayer breakfast for men that meets from 7 to 8 a.m. on Thursday mornings at Morrison's Cafeteria on Military Highway. Following the example he learned from the master, Boyd provides fellowship, companionship and simple teachings of how the Bible is a guide to daily living.
Marriage? It's covered. Sex? Got it. Success in business? Natch. Workaholism? Just listen.
``We want to show how the Bible applies to men's lives in a practical way,'' Boyd explained. ``How they can have a better marriage, how they can raise their children, how they can have a deeper relationship with one another. Men tend to be very goal-oriented and we believe that by helping them develop their relationships, we can help them achieve their goals in life.''
Boyd sits at Woodward's bedside and listens, as he has listened for 20 years. Boyd, while leaving out some details, describes himself as a desperate young man in 1976, torturing his family with depression, suicidal thoughts and an intense longing for Christ. Boyd's parents heard Woodward speak one night about being born again, and asked him to visit their son. Woodward walked in the door to find Boyd on his knees on the floor, crying out for God to send someone to help him.
``He sent me,'' Woodward told the young man, astonishing himself as much as Boyd, because Woodward never perceived himself as a divine messenger, just as a friend who had studied the Bible.
Because of Woodward, Boyd went to seminary, became a speaker for Campus Crusade for Christ, and then started his own evangelistic outreach to colleges and schools - Bob Boyd Ministries - based in Virginia Beach. Boyd said he has traveled around the United States and through the former Soviet Union, talking about the Bible.
``Bobby - to me, he's Bobby - is the greatest miracle I've ever seen,'' Woodward said. ``He'll do great things. I just believe he has a destiny.''
Recently, Woodward suggested that Boyd follow the path of his own destiny and start a local outreach, a prayer breakfast.
With the rise in the men's church movement, and with many local churches sponsoring their own breakfasts, Boyd had to find his own niche. The difference, he says, is that his breakfast is non-denominational, and follows the Woodward format: buffet meal, Scripture teaching without opinion, relationship, relationship, relationship.
For men. Why just men?
``There are certain things that men are more comfortable talking about,'' Boyd said. ``I think the same is true for women. Most of our ministry is for both. But this particular ministry locally, we feel like if it's for men, it will enable them to open up like they wouldn't otherwise.''
Woodward nods and smiles, remembering the way his own breakfasts started, with maybe six men. Then a dozen. Then 50. Then 100 and 100 more and 100 more.
``The men who came referred to it as the Thursday morning happening,'' Woodward said. ``And all we did was we had a buffet breakfast and I taught the Scripture for 30 minutes and then the men would go to work. It became like a fraternity.''
Many of the men did not even attend Woodward's church, Virginia Beach Community Chapel, where he pastored for 23 years. He tried to keep the breakfast as unchurchlike as possible, hoping that those who came and were touched would begin attending church, any church. He didn't take up a collection, and he didn't try to make them chapel members. Boyd says he will follow the same approach.
``You can't make a happening happen, it just happens,'' Woodward said. ``One hundred years from now, it may be that the most important thing I've ever done is to have that time with him.''
Boyd accepts the compliment, and returns it. ``He pursued a relationship with me when most people didn't think I deserved a prayer or had a prayer,'' Boyd said. ``I often tell people that I've been to seven years of seminary but the greatest seminary I ever went to is the seminary of suffering, because that really taught me that God can make a broken person whole.''
Woodward, immobile in his bed, nods and smiles. He recently received some great news, from doctors at two universities: he has a degenerative spinal disease.
He explains the mystery away: ``Not having multiple sclerosis is very good news.'' Since 1979, Woodward has believed he had MS, a progressive disease that eventually leaves patients blind, with slurred speech and impaired minds. He is thrilled to learn that, although his body is quadriplegic, the voice and the mind behind it will remain sound.
His symptoms were first attributed to stress from overwork, and he was forced to resign from the Virginia Beach church he helped found, and take some time off. In 1980, he moved to Williamsburg and founded a smaller church, but the symptoms worsened. That, too, turned out to be good.
The forced rest gave him time to work on 4,000 pages of notes and complete the tapes of what he calls a mini-Bible college. Now, the progression of his disease may force him to give up his weekly Bible class, but the voice will go on.
From a speaker phone at bedside, Woodward talks with pastors in South America. His tapes are broadcast around the world. His businessmen supporters have started the Dick Woodward endowment to keep the radio broadcasts going. They have $1.7 million already. They're aiming for $7 million.
``That will endow the cost of the radio broadcast, really, until Christ returns,'' Rosser said.
Woodward is modest about all that, and about his role. Boyd is not.
``I think filling his shoes is like leaping over a 100-foot wall. You can't do that,'' Boyd says. ``This is an opportunity to unite men around the theme of the difference God can make in our lives.''
And Woodward nods. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot
Dick Woodward, once the best-known preacher in Hampton Roads, is
about to retire.
Photo
LAWRENCE JACKSON/The Virginian-Pilot
Father Demetrios N. Kehagias of Tabernacle Church listens to the
sermon of Bob Boyd at a men's breakfast at Morrison's in Norfolk.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY MINISTRY by CNB