Religion

By PATRICK BUTLER
Religion Editor

His name may raise a few eyebrows as people try to grasp where in the world kids named “Winkie” come from. Though Winkie Pratney may not be a house-hold name in much of Smith County, he is certainly known among a select group of prominent ministers with international influences.

In June the relentlessly cheerful New Zealand native, who lives half the year in north Smith County, found himself chatting with the Rev. Dr. Billy Graham, the Rev. Dr. Lloyd John Ogilvie former chaplain of the U.S. Senate and the Rev. Dr. Robert Schuller founder of California’s Crystal Cathedral. The Rev. Dr. Jack Hayford, founder of King’s College and Seminary was there, along with the Rev. Dr. Loren Cunningham, founder of Youth With A Mission International and author Dr. John Perkins, founder of the Foundation for Reconciliation and Development.

And Winkie was in the center of what was happening, where he has so often seemed to be for 30-plus years.

Pratney, who will be 64 today, joined the ministerial heavy-hitters as part of a discussion group being recorded at The Cove, Graham’s training and retreat center in North Carolina. The hours-long project, “A Fireside Chat With Fathers” is scheduled for release in late 2008. On the second day of shooting, Graham called the group to his home.

“We had a half-hour face-to-face meeting with him, and it was tremendous,” Pratney said Monday at a Tyler coffee shop. “Each told Dr. Graham how he’d affected their life in some fashion. Here is this man, a genuine legend, who’s spoken to so many people about Christ. It was very touching.”

The meeting with Graham capped the exhilarating “Message to Father’s” experience with the ministry leaders.

“I really don’t know why I was included,” said Pratney. “I told them ‘I’m the only one without a “Reverend” or “Doctor” in front of my name; I’m the only one who hasn’t started a major organization that has had hundreds of followers; and I’m the only non-American.’” Pausing to reflect, he said smiling, “I really think I was there because I’m the world’s oldest teenager and have spoken to so many kids.”

Add “all over the world” to Pratney’s observation; include “discipling for decades” and then sprinkle in “after writing 14-odd books,” and the picture becomes clearer why he could hold his own with the group.

Pratney, who insists he doesn’t like to travel, has gone so many places he may have more frequent-flyer miles than anyone on the planet. He has flyer-miles, he said only half-joking, “on airlines that don’t exist anymore.” And, he added, he doesn’t like public speaking much either.

“I’m a left-brain nerd that is a maven when it comes to history,” he said. “Maven” is defined as “expert” by Merriam-Webster. It also is defined as “freak.”

But the former chemist turned youth evangelist — the son of a Maori father and Kiwi mother — has never relied much on self-promotion. He lets others do it for him or receives little at all, except by word of mouth. Typically he may speak to a handful of people on one day and hundreds the next. He goes, he said, where God leads. He has lived “quietly” in East Texas’ Piney Woods for more since the 1970s. His son, William, graduated from Lindale High School.

Last year in Korea where he was to speak at a church of 200, Pratney fell ill. Checking into a hospital for an expected overnight stay, he ended up staying weeks in intensive care. Doctors intentionally induced a coma for 21 days while trying to save Pratney’s life from septic shock.

A grass-roots and world-wide prayer effort on his behalf was started by missionaries who knew his perilous condition. The number of letters and emails he received was in the thousands. He survived, flew to New Zealand and spent most of 2007 in recovery. A generous outpouring helped him with extensive medical bills the small church could not cover.

“That little church in Korea treated me like Billy Graham,” said Winkie smiling. “The ripple effect the internet had with people praying for me was phenomenal.” His near-death experience made his meeting with Graham and the evangelist leaders, pastors and authors more poignant.

“In fact, I did die in Korea,” he said, reaching out a steadying hand. “It wasn’t for long, and I didn’t see the Lord, but I did experience a tremendous peace. I saw things I can’t describe but I can tell you there is no fear in dying. It’s just a change of location. I had no regrets.”

Winkie has “war stories” on decades of globe-trotting for Jesus abound and could fill books. In typical fashion, he and his wife Faeona have been evangelizing the past five days at “War Week” in urban Detroit. But the energetic – some say “fireball” – ex-chemist decided to spend a lifetime collecting rare books on historic revivals and evangelism instead. An awesome collection of more than 6,000 volumes – some rare first-runs from the 19th century and many out-of-print books from the early 20th - has been made available to Smith County students of revival and evangelism through Pratney’s “Revival Library.” There are 4,000 more volumes still waiting to be catalogued, he said.

Pratney said the collection represents “the church when it was behaving itself, and doing what Jesus told us to do.” The library, fittingly located at Youth With A Mission’s Twin Oaks Ranch at 20131 FM 16 West, is open to the public for inspection. The beyond-price library includes books by General William Booth and 18th century evangelist John Wesley among many others. There are 19th-century revival luminaries represented; R.A. Torrey, hymnist Francis Ridley Havergal, and evangelist attorney Charles Grandison Finney, who is closely associated with America’s “Second Great Awakening.”

In the library perusing the stacks this day the Tyler Morning Telegraph came, was Susie Finney, 28, a direct descendant of Charles.

“I’ve learned a lot about Charles in this room,” she said of her famous ancestor, eyeing the collection of his works. “There are things he’s written I’d never even known about until I came here.”

That doesn’t surprise Pratney, who said it’s another reason he’s made his collection public.

“This represents the cream of the world’s ideas, representing 2,000 years of Western writing,” he said, pointing to a collection of “The Great Ideas Synopticon” worth $1,000, and the “Gateway to Great Books” series now out of print. “You could get a complete liberal arts education, just from these.”

Picking up a first-run volume of “In Darkest England” by Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, Pratney said, “This is a blueprint of how to bring an entire nation out of darkness. It would have worked too, if Booth had been Prime Minister.”

To narrow the collection’s focus, he said his criteria for inclusion was “Christ being lifted up, the understanding and grasp of truth, and that the “fruit” remained” or lasted past the lifetime of the speaker. Whitefield was an amazing speaker, for example,” he said, “but Wesley left us the Methodists.”

A complete – and very oversized – three-set volume of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs sits on the pine-built shelves.

“This is a photo static copy of the original,” he said, unable to lift all three volumes easily. “When people tell me they’ve read Foxe’s, I ask, ‘did it look like this?’ Not many say ‘yes.’”

Pratney has spent thousands upon thousands of dollars collecting older volumes from around the world. People who know of Pratney’s passion for revival began to donate volumes. He opens an out-folding book of the complete timeline of history, a donation. The pages stretch out the door as he unfolds it.

“I have no idea how far this comes out,” he said. “Isn’t it amazing? A synoptic view of the world’s greatest ideas.”

Collections of C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, the famous “Inklings” group, and G.K. Chesterton, the Catholic writer are also included. As to the inclusion of Catholic writers in his collection, Pratney shrugged.

“God doesn’t discriminate,” he said. “Why should I?”

Even comic books are included in the collection. The reason is cultural, he said.

“This part of the collection is the interface between culture and church. Here is popular culture,” he said, indicating the comics. “Why is Superman so popular, for instance? Superman is a son sent by his father from another world to save earth. It’s a fascinating matrix.”

There are a thousand vinyl Christian music recordings included. The original notes of Pratney’s own writings are shelved. He holds a spiral notebook with the handwritten pages of “Youth Aflame” his classic discipleship manual. Youth Aflame was once found in Christian coffee houses and many backpacks on the “hippie trail” from Amsterdam to Katmandu in the 1970s.

“I didn’t know I could write that small,” he said “We probably didn’t have a lot of money back then.”

“The library exists to take the DNA of the past, sow it into the present and help create a new future,” he said. “The Bible says ‘Write the vision and make it plain upon the tables that he may run that reads it.’ (Habakkuk 2:2) Here is the vision.”

To help keep that DNA alive, Pratney has compiled an exhaustive — naturally — “Revival Study Bible.” The reference Bible includes a companion CD of classic revival lectures and sermons. The CD if printed out, he said, would take 14 reams of paper to accommodate it. The public-domain writings he drew from are a treasure of insight into the nature and character of God.

“Here is an original, classic sermon by E. Stanley Jones who spoke with Ghandi,” he said, scrolling through pages of material and topical categories complete with reference scriptures. “I think it’s the only study Bible of its kind in the world.”

The Revival Bible itself will probably be printed in Asia, he said, where much of his ministry is focused today.

“A publisher in Singapore has shown interest and we’re looking into it,” he said. As much as revival is his passion, there is a caution to it, he said.

“Revival is only the object to a goal, not the goal itself,” he said. “If we make revival the goal, we deify it, and Jesus is the Deity we need to know.”

Friends of the Pratney family have built a Web site to acquaint the public with a man many have yet to hear about. Visit the Web at www.winkiepratney.com and moh.org for information.

Smith County resident Winkie Pratney unfolds a synoptic timeline of the world’s great ideas, by date and country. The reprint of the timeline was donated to the Revival library.
((Staff Photo By Tom Turner))