What Ever Happened To That Dancing Instructor?

What Ever Happened To That Dancing Instructor?

Listening to the radio changed his life.

D. JAMES KENNEDY grew up in the 1930s in Chicago and attended the University of Tampa on a music scholarship. Big-band music was all the rage then, and many learned to dance at Arthur Murray studios. True to his pursuit of excellence in all areas, Jim mastered the steps, became an Arthur Murray dance instructor, and before long was a nationally competitive dancer.

When nineteen-year-old Anne Lewis entered the Tampa Arthur Murray Studio for a lesson one evening, Jim, then twenty-two, told a friend, “That’s the girl I’m going to marry.”

During their courtship, Anne, who was a Christian, challenged Jim about what he believed. Although he believed in God and assumed he was a Christian, Anne’s questions threw him.

One Sunday afternoon in 1955, Jim woke up with a hangover. The radio was on and tuned to a message by Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse from Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. Dr. Barnhouse asked, “Suppose that you were to die today and stand before God and He were to ask you, ‘What right do you have to enter into My Heaven?’—what would you say?” Jim listened to Barnhouse’s explanation of salvation and redemption. He recalls, “I was completely dumbfounded. I had never thought of such a thing as that. As I sat there on the edge of my bed with my mouth hanging open, I groped desperately for some answer.” Realizing he had no right to enter heaven, he gave his life to Christ.

The transformation of his life was immediate and miraculous. He made an overnight, 180 degree turn away from his former lifestyle. “To this day I have friends . . . who do not know what happened to me. One moment there was a young man managing an Arthur Murray dance studio, his heart and affections fastened entirely upon the things of this world. Then suddenly, overnight, something happened: a new person was born and an old person died.”

Shortly thereafter he drove to see Anne with an engagement ring in his pocket. He said, “I have quit my job at the studio, which means I’m almost flat broke. I am going into the ministry, and I know you always said you wouldn’t want to be a preacher’s wife. Will you marry me?” Anne was taken aback but said yes.

After graduating from seminary, he went to Fort Lauderdale in 1959 to start a church. The attendance at the first service of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church was forty-five. After ten months, attendance was down to seventeen! Jim and Anne were discouraged but didn’t give up. Jim went to Atlanta to conduct an evangelism conference with his seminary friend Kennedy Smartt. Observing his friend, Jim discovered what he felt were the tools for successful one-on-one evangelism. He went home to teach these tools to his little flock. In one month his church grew from 17 to 66, and then to 122 the next year. When they reached 200 members, they built a church, quickly becoming one of the fastest growing churches in America. By 1974 Coral Ridge had more than 3,000 members!

Pastors from all over wanted to know how he did it. In answer, Jim held his first Evangelism Explosion (EE) Clinic on February 20, 1967, to train pastors in his unique method of lay evangelism. Thirty-six pastors attended that first clinic. Since 1967 EE Clinics have trained thousands of pastors, and in 1996 EE International reached its goal of planting EE teams in all 211 of the world’s nations.

James Kennedy continues to evangelize the world through Evangelism Explosion and through his radio and television ministries from Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale.

Reflection

The key questions of Evangelism Explosion are: Have you come to a place in your spiritual life where you can say you know for certain that if you were to die today you would go to heaven? Suppose that you were to die today and stand before God and he were to say to you, “Why should I let you into my heaven?” How would you answer these two questions?

To all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn! This is not a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan—this rebirth comes from God.

John 1:12-13