(EDITOR'S NOTE: As a service to our readers, the rambling mental tangents of our publisher, Ole Anthony, have been deconstructed and tagged with a handy marker that looks like this – . )

     The persevering church resembles the story of The Little Engine That Couldn't.
     You haven't heard that story? It's not really a best seller.
     Maybe you remember the original tale, called The Little Engine That Could. In that one, the little locomotive huffs and puffs up a steep hill, chanting the mantra, "I think I can, I think I can."
     The book is supposed to be good for kids, to build their self-esteem and all that. It's supposed to teach them perseverance.
     But many of us feel like we've been in a train wreck most of the time. In fact, our lives seem to be a train wreck in slow motion, with freight cars slamming into one another over a period of years.
     When will it ever stop? Only when God is through conforming us to the image of His Son.
     Elsewhere in this issue, we give out our 1997 Puffy Awards for Perseverance Under Fire. It's easy for us to satirize our honorees' bull-headedness and ignorance masquerading as perseverance.
     But what does the real thing look like?
     (Tangent 1. ) Most of our Puffies went to televangelists. We tried, we really tried, not to pick on televangelists this year. But to understand perseverance, you've got to see it's opposite.
     I guess this is some kind of weird cosmic atonement on my part for the brief time I spent as a televangelist in 1972. I was a new believer then and had helped start in Dallas what we were told was only the fourth religious television station in the nation. In at least one telethon, I actually cried crocodile tears, "sincerely" asking the viewing audience for money to do the "work of God." I used every psychological trick I knew on camera to raise money to keep the station on the air.
     At the same time I was asking the viewers to accept Jesus as their personal Savior, even though 99 percent of them were already believers.
     The whole thing made me feel sleazy, but I didn't know why. Maybe it was because most of our viewers barely had enough income to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.
     (Tangent 2. ) (I feel like I need to wash my mouth out with Drano after this confession. Yech!)
     (Back to tangent 1. ) My appeals were based on the needs of the station. That was before the prosperity preachers came up with an even better reason to give – greed. Getting goodies from God is a great motivator.
     There were only a handful of televangelists then. Now there are more than 2500 on 900 Christian television stations. The Trinity Broadcasting Network, where most of our Puffy Award winners hang out, has more than 530 affiliated stations. The whole bunch is taking in more than $3.5 billion in an untaxed and unregulated industry.
     The money is given by a donor pool of about five million people. Sixty percent of them are elderly, 30 percent are in some desperate circumstance and the remaining 10 percent are in the upper middle class looking for a spiritual justification for their greed.
     I believe most televangelists start out sincerely. But the system of paying for time on television stations forces them to devote more and more effort to fund-raising and eventually to selling God and preaching a gospel of "name it and claim it."
     The "electronic church" that is their congregation/audience has no chance to touch the preacher or one another. Without accountability – i.e., laying down your life daily for each other – this hothouse of isolation leads to lies, fraud, sexual misconduct, authoritarianism, and total self-indulgence.
     (Tangent 3. ) Our church here in Dallas includes many who were formerly homeless. Some of them had given money to televangelists, but were turned away when they asked for help in their time of need. We tried to talk to some of these televangelists but the walls were impenetrable. As we collected more and more information about them, we saw the same pattern develop in each one.
     We established a hotline for victims of televangelists at 1(800) 229-VICTIM and received thousands of calls. Based on those responses, we have set up active files on 130 televangelists. Our investigations helped lead us to our Puffy Award winners.
     The photo for The Door's first centerfold (W.V. Grant in the buff, tastefully done, check it out) was found discarded in his trash during an investigation we did for a national news program.
     From what we've found, most televangelists don't wait for anything, and they wouldn't recognize real perseverance if it was giving 'em a $20 massage.
     But back to The Little Engine That Couldn't.
     (The whole point of article. )
     Perseverance isn't something we can do. It's something God does in us. Believers must realize we are without resources, bankrupt, running on empty, and if anything happens, it's got to be God doing it. No amount of saying "I think I can" will change that. We've got to say "I know I can't."
     We're broken, as in "a broken and contrite heart." The Hebrew word is shabar, which means "shattered; no longer able to function as it once did."
     (Non-essential afterthought. ) A few issues ago, we poked fun at Martin Marty, a columnist for Christian Century magazine and a respected commentator on the religion scene. We innocently wondered whether he actually does anything for a living. In a recent column, Marty took note of our question and explained that, yes, indeed, he really does stuff. He made it sound pretty boring.
     That's when it hit me. The contrast, I mean.
     Here is a man who has displayed 50 years of patient continuance. A man whose writings and insight have truly produced in me and many others John The Baptist's injunction to "bring forth fruit meet for repentance." He has endured.
     Patience, endurance, abiding, suffering, seeing through the pain.
     Martin Marty, Billy Graham, the persecuted pastors in China and believers everywhere who keep a low profile and a light wallet understand that. But televangelists would think this was a message straight from the Devil.
     (Self-deprecating zinger. ) Or...uh...from The Door.