Tinney Chapel Today

SINCE LOSING HIS SIGHT four and a half years ago, Tony Crow views the world through Philippians 4:13 (NKJV): I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me, a New Testament verse that Tony says is tattooed on the surface of his artificial eye! “The words are with me always, and I believe them. Without Christ, I wouldn’t be here today.”

“HERE” WAS TINNEY CHAPEL’s Family Life Center, where Tony recalled, for the church’s OASIS group, an unforgettable Valentine’s Day during a West Texas quail hunt in 2003, when a stray pattern of birdshot splattered across his unprotected eyes, darkening his world forever.

THAT TRAGIC HUNTING ACCIDENT was, for a time, an even darker day for Tony’s son Landon, who had aimed and fired in Tony’s direction only because his father had earlier told him that he would be moving up a nearby fence row. Tony’s arbitrary change of planned location, without informing Landon, changed both lives, dramatically.

“BUT I WAS NEVER ANGRY AT MY SON,” emphasizes Tony, who concedes that he wore neither safety glasses to protect his eyes nor orange-hued body markers to enhance his visibility to Landon and other hunters. When he learned that he would never see again, confirmed by two operations on each eye, Tony knew he could not let it get him down permanently, in part because he realized how heavy the situation weighed on Landon, who had already declined professional counseling for help in dealing with having fired the shot that blinded his father.

LANDON’S ATTITUDE TOWARD HIMSELF CHANGED only when Rudy entered their lives, and he saw the big German Shepherd Leader Dog restore much of Tony’s independence, guiding his father from house to barn, allowing him to resume many farm chores and even travel (with wife Cheryl and Rudy) all over the country as an in-demand motivational speaker with a strong Christian witness testimony.

“BUT IT HAS NOT BEEN EASY,” admits Tony, who says he still cries sometimes, and doesn’t mind admitting it. “Sometimes I still wonder why it happened to me, and then I remember that Jesus, while on the Cross, asked why God had forsaken Him: If Jesus could ask why, then you and I can ask why.”

# posted by Joe Dan Boyd @ 8/21/2007

Most of the historic photos of Louis Newton, above, were provided by Tinney Family historian, Arvinell Newton McClaren. The historic photo of Helen Tinney (later Helen Miller) is from the collection of the late Maude Tinney Cater, who also was baptized at Tinney Chapel on Aug. 10, 1928, as was Louis Newton's late Aunt Dolly Tinney, shown in one of the photo collages, above.

TINNEY TALK:
Observations by Joe Dan Boyd

Among the Living Legends of our 107-year-old quintessential country church, Louis Newton stands first, as suggested below!

Today, on Friday, August 10, 2007, the quintessential country church celebrates the 79^th anniversary of the baptism of Louis Newton, our 93-year-old patriarch, who was also born not far from 449 County Road 4620, then a dusty dirt road known primarily as the path to a farming community’s church and nearby country school. Absent the church and the school, this road served mainly to connect two other unpaved country courses: The Stout Road (now FM 312) and the road to Cater Hill (now FM 2869).

Both community institutions, the church and the school, owed their existence to land donations in 1900 and 1911 by Ambrose Tinney, an early settler from Alabama, who farmed a large acreage with his large family, living in an unpainted, sprawling monument to frontier architecture at the intersection of what is now 4620 and 312.

Not far from that intersection, on August 10, 1928, one of Ambrose’s grandsons, Louis Newton, barely 14 years of age, walked a bit less than a mile to a night revival service at Tinney Chapel, then experiencing a rebirth of spiritual growth and enthusiasm. Louis’ young heart was sufficiently Spirit-filled and so strangely warmed that he took his second walk of the evening: Down the aisle, and all the way up to the pulpit, where he was baptized, by Rev. Kerner Isbell, as a Believer in Jesus Christ as Lord.

Louis’ cousin, and Tinney Chapel matriarch, Helen Tinney Miller, was baptized that same night, along with 26 others!

“After I was baptized, I ran all the way home, mostly through plowed ground and pasture,” recalls Louis. Teen-age boys of that area and era understood that travel to any destination was usually accomplished just as it had been when Jesus and His Disciples walked the earth: On foot.

That his memorable conversion experience sent Louis running for home 79 years ago is perhaps best regarded as a metaphor for his Christian journey toward Home! A decade or so after his baptism, Louis moved to South Texas, settling in Port Neches. But Tinney Chapel had won his heart, and after his retirement, Louis returned to the community of his youth, re-joining this church in 2001, running a tad slower after all the years, but still knowing the way Home!

# posted by Joe Dan Boyd @ 8/10/2007