Lester Roloff to the Rescue

Roloff's Rebekah Home for Girls was a fraud, with abuse & a form of slavery being the rule. And Schambach & his buddy A. A. Allen were both quacks. (Allen died after a drinking binge; Schambach taught ""Faith/prosperity".)

 

Lester Roloff would occasionally speak at our daily chapel time at Calvary University KCMO.
I never worked for him directly but was involved with his work in the KCMO area.

i remember once he brought a choir of his girls, they sang and recited endless passages of memorized scripture.
If they were slaves they were happy joyful slaves.

Generally he was well loved in Kansas City.
He supported all manner of homes, soup kitchens, rescue missions (I preached at one in Kansas City) etc, not just the girls Rebekah Home.

Parents would send their children (boys and girls) to the homes rather than prison. He was SUPER strict.

He insisted that once the state allowed the parents to give over their children in lieu of reform school that they (state) stay away. Parents could have them released at will (usually).

I don't like Wikipedia but their summary is very accurate about Lester.
Lester Roloff - Wikipedia

 

Ah yes, and he also had his 'Rainbow' boys and 'Honeybee' girls who'd sing:

 

Died in a plane crash on Election Day 1982 (Democrat Mark White the projected winner of the Texas Governor's race, had vowed to shut down for good Roloff's homes for wayward girls and rebellious teens):

LESTER ROLOFF, RADIO PREACHER, 68, DIES AS HIS PLANE CRASHES IN TEXAS

"Lester Roloff, killed in a small-plane crash in Texas Tuesday, was a radio evangelist who fought an eight-year battle with the State of Texas over his management of homes for troubled teen-agers."

"he and four others died when the plane he was piloting crashed near Normangee....The other victims were identified as Elaine Wingert, 30,...Susan Lynn Smith, 28, Cheryl Palmer, 24, and Enola Slade, 25."

"A Roloff spokesman, Dave Walkden, said that Mr. Roloff had been flying planes for 25 years. The Texas authorities said the plane disappeared from the radar screen...110 miles north of Houston, and that there was no indication of trouble, although some storms were reported."

 

An amusing Lester Roloff video, @ 07:02 as Mrs. Deanna McClary takes the pulpit, everyone stands to their feet. Most everyone is enthusiastically clapping, except Bro. Roloff, who quickly motions for everyone to sit down!

 

I much prefer the Sword of the Lord's singers the 'Himes Kids' and the 'Rice Sisters':

 

Governor White was the father of Andrew White, the PCA elder who became a 2018 Democrat gubernatorial contender (was all over the news for a time).

 

Lester Roloff in the 1980s was on Indianapolis radio weeknights at 9 PM for a half hour because he had been helped by Indianapolis IFB preacher Greg Dixon, who now is retired to Florida I think, and Dixon saw that the program was rerun for several years. I used to listen to it regularly and have posted about Roloff several times over the years here on the Baptist Board. Dixon was not so winsome locally and got into a fight with the federal government over paying taxes and had a ramshackle church building confiscated (Baptist Temple) in a neighborhood near Garfield Park just south of downtown in Indianapolis that now has declined to just another area that used to be nice sixty years ago.

Roloff was correct about the motives of the government. Eventually, rescue missions were unable to raise the money to meet the demands of homelessness and the government stepped in with mental health funds for counselors and food stamps and agricultural surplus to fill the pantries. The boards of health demanded different standards of food preparation. Surplus from banquets and luncheons and bakeries was no longer allowed to be donated. In effect, missions began to serve food that was much like school lunches.

Eventually, the federal government ruled that a rescue mission that accepted federal funds could no longer require attendance in a chapel as a condition of admittance to the rescue mission.

The old idea of soup, soap and Salvation was now illegal. It used to be that transients attended chapel, ate supper, and then showered before being assigned a bunk in a large room of bunk beds and were awakened about 4 or 5 in the morning and served a small breakfast and sent out to find work.

No more. Now they just eat and sleep. Few, if any, attend chapel. The Feds destroyed the rescue mission and turned it into a hostel for the alcoholic, drug addict, mental patient, and occasional bankrupt who wanders in. Indianapolis has one mission that does not accept federal money. Also, in cities all over the USA, rescue missions have been moved out of the downtown areas into various neighborhoods.

Roloff was a good man and there was no one to take his place. He used to tell about how he kept a milk cow to pay his way through Baylor. He liked to sing but was not such a good singer. He used to say that people would ask him if he lived by faith and he would say that he told them, Man, I have to.