Connectivity

2010-09-13T18:24:00.000-07:00

A Dual Charge

Yesterday was a very special day for Jana and me.

In the Sabbath morning we accepted the call as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Desdemona, Texas, our little ranching community 90 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

In the Sabbath evening, we held the first worship celebration of Bread Fellowship, our new community of faith in Fort Worth.

We feel led to lend our pastoral energies to both of these Christian communities.

When my interim pastorate ended with the First Baptist Church of Brownwood in June, the folks in Desdemona invited me to preach. They had experienced numerous challenges in recent years. Attendance has dwindled to 8 worshippers. Discussions centered on closing the doors of this historic Texas church.

We have preached all summer, except for prior Sabbath commitments in other places, and have witnessed the power of the Word of God to convene—and reconvene— a community of faith, hope, and love. We have experienced lively and meaningful Sabbath services, with more and more worshippers week by week, to the happy point that the saints at Desdemona see new life and possibility in their fellowship again.

We are privileged to serve our own neighborhood church where our ranch is located and where Jana’s grandparents invested their lives.

In the Sabbath evening yesterday we had the first worship celebration of our exciting new ministry in Fort Worth called Bread Fellowship. We have been meeting in two small group Bible studies for the past year, and have a core group of 40 or so. Nothing fancy, just sitting in folding chairs arranged in a circle with the Lord's Table in the center.

Our sense of the Spirit's leadership is to focus on the Museum District/Montgomery Plaza area of our city, just west of downtown Fort Worth. We presently meet in the community room of the Monticello Apartments at the corner of North Bailey and White Settlement, but, with yesterday’s gathering, we have already run out of space. We are reaching out mainly to young adults who, for one reason or another, have an ambiguous relationship with the institutional church. (I always smile when I write this line, because we too will likely be institutional enough very soon!) We have no plans to own property or a building.

We are trying to keep this ministry highly inclusive, interactive, informal and intimate, building Christian community around Scripture, prayer, fellowship, and hands-on mission involvement. We have a two word mission statement: Eat. Feed.

I have joined two other fine ministers, Terry Austin and Paul Hood-Patterson, in a pastoral team. There will be others joining this pastoral circle; we are open to God-called ministers who feel led to build a ministry of radical inclusiveness and love.

Let me take a minute to ask you brothers and sisters a big favor:

If you have friends or family members who live in Fort Worth and who do not have a church home, and you feel comfortable providing us their names and contact information, we would be privileged to extend the invitation and friendship of Christ to these friends. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Your prayers are the best gifts. Thank you for lifting us up to the Light of God's love and grace! And, do send us those contacts, as the Spirit leads.

So, Jana and I are now circuit-riding Sabbath preachers, glad and grateful to proclaim our Lord’s great good news in these two fascinating congregational contexts.

2010-05-02T23:27:00.000-07:00

Calling As Sign of the Kingdom

Today was a significant day in the little piece of God’s garden I’ve been given to hoe in as three churches I have served staked claim on two of its fine young ministers.

33 year old Ryon Price was called unanimously as the fifth Senior Pastor of the Second Baptist Church of Lubbock and 21 year old Ben Harrison was licensed unanimously to the ministry of the Gospel by the First Baptist Church of Brownwood.

In my spirit, it is no coincidence that the Body of Christ affirmed these two young ministers on the same Sabbath day.

When Lubbock native Ryon Price was a student at Texas Tech University, he began a conversation with me, Hardy Clemons, and others about what it means to be a pastor. That conversation grew into an authentic claim by God on Ryon’s life for pastoral ministry. He has given evidence of that call by his graduation Magna Cum Laude from Duke Divinity School in 2004, and his pastoral ministry in churches in North Carolina and Vermont from 2003 to the present.

When Ben Harrison was boy growing up in Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio, he listened to the preaching of his pastors with uncanny understanding and attentiveness. He comes by his call naturally as his father, Steve Harrison, is a gifted lay Bible teacher at Trinity, and his grandmother is an ordained Episcopal priest. As one of his professors at Howard Payne University told me recently about him, “This young man doesn’t just study. He seeks and questions.”

Two years ago, I and others recommended Ryon to Second B as senior minister for that special congregation, explaining to the search team that he possessed an affinity for pastoral proclamation and ministry far beyond his age and experience. Both he and the church conducted themselves in the discernment process with patience and prudence, waiting for the Spirit to disclose a sense of divine will and purpose at the right moment. That moment came today in what numerous friends said was a Spirit-filled service as Ryon preached in view of a call and the congregation joyously confirmed that call.

Ben joined the First Baptist Church of Brownwood shortly after I began my interim ministry here last July. At that time, we began meeting on Sunday afternoons for conversation about the life and work of a pastor. This evening, Ben preached a masterful sermon—only his second preaching event ever and his very first in a Sabbath service-- from John 4 about a marginalized Samaritan woman touched by the love of Christ. Afterwards, the First Baptist Brownwood congregation spoke their response to Ben, a moving celebration of hope and promise in a precocious young servant of Christ. At the benediction, we all encompassed Ben in a circle of love, our hands outstretched and resting on him in affirmation. The venerated pastor Dr. Robert Smith led us in a prayer of dedication, the oldest minister in the congregation voicing our—and God’s-- blessing to the youngest.

In this remarkable season of change for the churches of Christ, and the accompanying stress and upheaval of that change, it is a great goodness to witness the age-old Spirit’s call on Ryon and Ben for service to the Church. Why would two bright young adults, and countless others like them, submit themselves for that peculiar, nerve-wracking service unless a Power beyond themselves so radically compelled them that they could no more resist that call than resist breath itself?

It is no less than a sign of the Kingdom of God for me.

My cup is full tonight.

2010-02-17T14:06:00.000-08:00

Baptist Confusion

My friends on the Baylor University Board of Regents are urging patient understanding from our Texas Baptist family concerning the appointment of Kenneth Starr as president of the university.

The call to reason and patience-- two clear Scriptural virtues-- is timely for those of us who are confused and dismayed by this appointment. Because we all, as St. Paul reminds us, “see through a glass darkly,” we must be open to perspectives different from our own, and possibilities other than those we can imagine.

But, given the consistent hijacking of Baptist soul freedom by the forces of conformity over the past 30 years, it seems to me that skepticism is the reasonable response to this decision.

The Baylor Board of Regents has been politicized and polarized. It has hired an individual who symbolizes that political polarization.

Kenneth Starr was born into the Church of Christ. He presently holds membership at a non-denominational church in Virginia—sea to shining sea away from his present home in California. Reports are that he will join a Baptist church upon relocating to Waco.

Texas Baptists are unfailingly polite, but we must sacrifice a dab of decorum to get Judge Starr's views candidly and publically established now on the following questions:

1.) Do you affirm for Baylor professors full freedom to pursue truth according to the leadership of God's Spirit?

2.) Do you endorse the complete equality of women under God to perform God's work in the world?

3.) Why should Texas Baptists continue collecting God's tithes and offerings for Baylor University? (The current annual $3 million from the Baptist General Convention of Texas is a pittance for Baylor, but would be pivotal for any number of other cooperative Texas Baptist missions and ministries.)

4.) Do you believe in separation of church and state?

5.) How will you appropriate your views on Christian citizenship in a way that honors both the republican and democratic (both lower case) visions for our national life, and strenuously upholds the historic Baptist conviction for religious liberty?

President Starr needs to host an all-day meeting ASAP-- as in next week, at the latest-- of all Texas Baptist preachers to hash out these questions and get his views on the record. And, I don't mean one of those perfunctory "get to know the new president" coffees in a church fellowship hall somewhere.

It is widely reported that Kenneth Starr is a decent, kind man; my own experience of sharing a table with him years ago confirms this. Precisely because of this decency, he needs to get before the Texas Baptist family-- his new family-- in honest disclosure of his heart. Christian accountability demands it.

Baylor isn't "Christian" just because it says so. Even the demons give such verbal assent. Baylor is Christian because it does the very things Jesus did, those odd, wonderful, peculiar, distinctive things that build the new rule of God.

2010-01-29T14:36:00.000-08:00

Grace Abounds

Last Monday evening around 9:00 p.m., after a good and full day of pastoral ministry in Brownwood, I was stopped by an officer of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

I had just finished delivering the greeting and invocation for the 300 or so folks gathered at our church for the annual Brownwood High School Football Banquet, and was making my way home to our ranch in Desdemona.

It had been a good day of numerous meaningful visits, conversations, and prayers with the people in our fellowship. On such days, pastors sometimes slip into a reverie of reflection and thanksgiving about the goodness of our lives together in Christ, the friendship that connects us in Christian community, and the high purpose that is ours in building the Kingdom of God.

Such a trance of gratitude must have made the foot heavier on the accelerator. On Highway 16 north of Comanche, as I approached the Sabanna River, a southbound DPS officer stopped me. He clocked me exceeding the speed limit, flashed his lights, and turned around to ticket me.

My sweet hour of prayer became a frantic plea.

It was pitch dark, and the officer approached my car carefully on the passenger side, asked for my license, insurance, and registration, and sternly inquired as to where I had been and what I had been up to.

Shamelessly pulling the “pastor card,” I stammered something about Brownwood, First Baptist Church, and ministry.

Immediately, his entire demeanor softened. His face brightened. He began talking casually about the fine folks he knew in Brownwood, his own faith, and the spiritual importance of church in his life.

He handed my license back to me and started asking me about mutual friends and acquaintances. Far fewer than the theoretical “six degrees” separate folks in our part of Texas, so we had numerous relationships in common. Finally, he tipped his hat, admonished me to slow down and be careful on the way home. Then a theology: “Reverend, the Lord needs you.”

He extended his hand through the window to me, and introduced himself.

“I’m Officer Grace.”

My roadside conversations with law enforcement officers have not always ended so happily. Nor do I think ministers are entitled to any special consideration when it comes to traffic infractions. My friends have given me endless grief about my absurdly good fortune. One took a little exegetical liberty with Hebrews 4.16: “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace in our time of speed.”

But, on a dark night, on a lonely stretch of highway, in the face of my own violation, I encountered Grace. And I made it home.

2010-01-18T06:55:00.000-08:00

Witness

When Martin Luther King, Jr. became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church of Montgomery, Alabama, just up the road a hundred or so miles from my hometown of Monroeville, he was 25 years old and right out of graduate school. He was blessed to be called to that prestigious, middle class congregation right across the street from the statehouse of the Alabama capitol. He had absolutely no intention of getting involved in racial justice and equality. His only goal was to revitalize and grow the church. In fact, his predecessor in the pastoral office at Dexter Avenue was regarded as something of a hothead, a firebrand, and the good folks at Dexter did not want to repeat that kind of pastoral tenure. So, they called an erudite, groomed, well-educated, scholarly young minister right out of his doctoral program at Boston University.

The next year, as Providence would have it, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began. A godly Christian woman named Rosa Parks was arrested because she refused to move to the back of the bus where African-Americans were forced to sit. King was placed on the committee to look into the matter, but still steadfastly refused to take a leadership role.

On a fateful night in December of 1955, the elder pastors of the community came to Dr. King before the worship service that evening and commissioned him to speak to the congregation gathered there. He demurred. He thought he was too young, too inexperienced, too green and untried. He wanted one of the other ministers to take a leadership role. But those wise older pastors gathered around the young man and blessed and anointed him to lead the movement. He took to the sacred desk that night, and delivered a sermon that would mobilize the church of Jesus Christ and transform a nation.

Fast-forward thirteen brief years to a rainy night in Memphis in April of 1968. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference had organized a strike of garbage collectors in Memphis to secure a decent wage. Over a thousand folks had come from all over Memphis that night of April 3 to the Mason Temple to hear King preach. The famous preacher was exhausted. His travel schedule was merciless. The pressure on him was enormous. The FBI had him under surveillance. He was constantly away from his wife and family. The nation was in turmoil. And he did not feel like preaching that evening. He felt like he had nothing to say. He was empty, uninspired. He asked his dear friend, Ralph Abernathy, to take his place at the pulpit that night, but Dr. Abernathy gently rebuked his good friend, saying, “Martin, these people didn’t walk through this storm tonight to hear me.” King then made his way to the Temple and delivered his famous “Mountaintop” sermon that is seared into our consciousness. His only request was for the pianist that night to play, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.”

Jana and I had the privilege to hear this account firsthand in 2008 as we received the highest honor of my pastoral career: induction into the Martin Luther King Board of Preachers at Morehouse College in Atlanta. The Rev. Billy Kyles, one of the three men last to see Dr. King alive, was the keynote speaker on that occasion. Rev. Kyles said that the entourage gathered at the Lorraine Hotel had been invited to the Kyles’ home for supper around 6:00 that evening; Mrs. Kyles had cooked a fried chicken supper, a favorite meal for a bunch of preachers. They stepped out on the balcony, an awful shot rang out, and Jerusalem had slain another prophet.

Rev. Kyles wondered aloud with us at Morehouse that day: “Why did God place me there with Dr. King on that April 4, 1968. All these years, I’ve asked God why he had me on that balcony that day. There is nothing special about me. I wasn’t a leader in that group. I couldn’t preach powerfully like King and Abernathy. I didn’t have the personal charisma of those men.” He spoke pensively, slowly, reflectively. Then his countenance brightened. He lifted his face to us, his eyes dancing, and he declared boldly to the eruption of the entire hall at Morehouse, “I now know why I was there: Because every crucifixion has to have a witness!”

There is so much work yet to be done. The dream is not yet reality but is still deferred. On this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 2010, let’s remember why God has us here.

2009-09-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

Singing The Lord's Song

This past week I read a story about Max Fuchs, 87, of New York City. As an Army soldier in WWII, Mr. Fuchs led the first Jewish service on German soil after the rise of Hitler.

On October 9, 1944 in Aachen, Germany, as a 22 year old veteran of the Omaha Beach D-Day landing, Private First Class Fuchs served as the cantor for the open-air worship service. NBC Radio was on hand to broadcast the historic occasion to the entire world.

“I was as much scared as anyone else,” Mr. Fuchs told the New York Times in an interview. “But since I was the only one who could do it, I tried my best.”

Before the war broke out, Mr. Fuchs was studying to become a cantor in his synagogue, the equivalent of Minister of Music in our Baptist churches. But he left his studies and entered the Army when his country called. His family immigrated to the United States from Poland in 1932 when he was a 12 year old boy. Many of his family members were killed when Germany invaded his home country in 1939.

The two hymns he chose for that historic worship celebration rejoiced in the Providential care of Almighty God, and the hope for redemption in the hereafter. As the men sang them that day, there were artillery shells exploding nearby. You can hear this on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZihm6VlYjo

This story reminds me of the importance of singing the Lord’s Song.

We are privileged to live in a country where we can celebrate our faith in peace, without the threat of oppressive forces seeking to destroy our freedom.

Each Sunday as we gather for worship, we sing songs declaring our God’s great power to save and redeem.

Whether or not we have innate musical talent like Mr. Fuchs, I hope we will sing them every Sunday with the same urgent and passionate faith those soldiers sang them on that Jewish Sabbath day long ago.

2009-08-20T06:17:00.000-07:00

Carol Brown Johnson
1925-2009

Carol Brown Johnson, age 84, went to be with the Lord on Tuesday, August 18, 2009, after an extended and courageous struggle with lung disease.

She was born on April 14, 1925 in Repton, Alabama to Clarence and Abigail Brown. After graduating from Repton High School, she moved to Mobile to work as a secretary in the shipyard industry during World War II. She met and married Francis Johnson of Franklin, Alabama in 1950. In addition to her primary vocation of raising four sons, she worked as a bank teller, church secretary for the Gadsden Street United Methodist Church, and an administrative assistant for over twenty years for both the Pensacola Educational Program for resident physicians and the Escambia County Medical Society, retiring in 2001. She cared valiantly for her husband during the last years of his life as they struggled together with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

She was a faithful member of the First Baptist Church of Pensacola.

She is preceded in death by her beloved husband, Francis.

She is survived by her four sons, Langdon of Mobile, Alabama and wife Cheri; Francis of Mobile and wife Rose; Charles of Fort Worth, Texas and wife Jana; and Dennis of Louisville, Kentucky and wife Tracy; eight grandchildren, Chad, Cliff, Will, Peter, Chris Anne, Langdon, Nathan, and Anabeth; one great-grandchild, Corley of San Angelo, Texas; brother Cecil of Houston, Texas.

Memorial services will be on Thursday, August 20, 11:00 a.m. in the Pleitz Chapel at the First Baptist Church of Pensacola, 500 N. Palafox Street, with the Rev. Dr. Barry Howard and the Rev. Charlie Wilson officiating. Visitation will precede the services at 9:30 a.m. Graveside services will be held later in the day at 3:00 p.m. in the River Ridge Cemetery of Franklin, Alabama.

Memorial gifts may be sent in lieu of flowers to the general ministry fund of the First Baptist Church of Pensacola, 500 N. Palafox Street, Pensacola, Florida, 32501.

2009-07-01T15:26:00.000-07:00

A Hindered Gospel

The youth of the Broadway Baptist Church of Fort Worth, Texas were scheduled to embark this coming Friday, July 3, on a long-scheduled music and mission tour to eastern Kentucky to sing praise to Almighty God and build decent housing for Appalachian poor people—two very basic things biblical faith commands followers of Christ to do.

They had carefully planned to work with Mountain Outreach, a mission associated with the University of the Cumberlands located in Williamsburg, Kentucky, and to stay in dormitories on the university campus.

On Monday of this past week—two days ago— Broadway received a phone call from the university informing us that the youth group was not welcome at University of the Cumberlands. The subsequent facsimile sent to Broadway Minister of Youth Fran Patterson, in its entirety, said this:

“In light of the recent decision at the Southern Baptist Convention regarding your status and affiliation with the convention, we have determined that we must resend (sic) our invitation to participate in our summer program with Mountain Outreach beginning July 5 through the 11th. We regret any inconvenience that the situation has caused especially in such short notice.

“Any inquiries in this matter may be directed to the office of the President of the University of the Cumberlands.”

Presumably, only those affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention are qualified to do the work of the Lord at Cumberland.

Perhaps poor people who live in substandard housing in eastern Kentucky care about the denominational affiliation of those partnering with them in improving their lives. I lived and ministered in that lovely part of the world from 1986-1989 as Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Albany, Kentucky, but I simply do not remember any such concern.

What I do remember is that the good people of Kentucky conducted themselves with the highest standards of Christian grace and hospitality.

When I delivered the Franklin P. Owen lectures on the campus of the University of the Cumberlands last September, during my tenure as Interim Pastor of Broadway, I received nothing but a respectful, gracious reception from the fine faculty, staff, and student body there.

Indeed, I discovered that the University of the Cumberlands mission statement, “to offer promising students of all backgrounds a broad based liberal arts program enriched with Christian values,” is put amply into practice.

So, I am puzzled by this impoliteness.

Furthermore, I am fairly certain, even in my limited understanding of the mysterious ways of God, that the work of the Gospel is not helped but hindered by Cumberland’s reactionary decision.

So is this is what it all has come to in Southern Baptist life, a moral absolutism so airtight that is has no room for a bunch of kids who just want to do something good for God?

The decision has left Youth Pastor Fran Patterson scrambling to make other arrangements so that the young teenagers eager to serve their fellow human beings would not be disappointed. I received the following email correspondence from Fran just now:

“Thank you so much for your support and help in this difficult situation. I think I have finally found a place for us to stay and serve in the Nashville area. The whole trip was planned around the mission project in Kentucky, so I needed to find a place that wouldn't upset the rest of the schedule. It is nice to know that there are friends out there who love us and support us in what we do. I am meeting with the youth tonight to explain the happenings of the last few days.”

I wish that youth pastor did not have to make such an explanation to people in such a formative stage of their moral development. Even the wisest moral teacher would have a difficult challenge making sense of this to an adolescent understanding. I have had two days to reflect on it, and my adult mind is still confused.

Perhaps the President of the University of the Cumberlands should give the explanation. He would say that the recent disfellowship of Broadway by the Southern Baptist Convention put him in a difficult position with regard to his trustees and donors. He would say that he couldn’t risk association with a church that receives all persons, regardless of background or condition, into its life and fellowship. He would say that he simply had the best interests of the university in mind.

But when he finished speaking those kids still would be confused. So would the poor folks of Whitley County. So would I.

And, I suspect, so would Jesus.

So, on second thought, save the explanation. Issue an apology instead.

2009-06-29T21:29:00.000-07:00

Glad Reunion

Jana and I were honored to be invited back to help celebrate the 60th anniversary of our beloved Trinity Baptist Church of San Antonio this past weekend.

New senior minister Les Hollon graciously extended an invitation to us weeks ago, and we eagerly accepted. I have returned to preach memorial services in the Trinity community on a number of occasions since I left three years ago this very week, but this is the first time I have had the privilege to preach a worship celebration.

It was an absolute delight, full with Trinity’s signature exuberance and warmth.

It was particularly thrilling to join in the dedication of the TriPoint community outreach center at St. Mary’s and Hwy. 281, just several blocks south of Trinity’s main campus at 319 E. Mulberry Street. Six years ago, God gave our congregation the vision to acquire the vacated Albertson’s Supermarket building at that location.

In one of the most notable outpourings of generosity I have ever witnessed from a congregation, Trinity raised almost $4 million in pledges to purchase that building in only two weeks’ time. Through the years, it has been used to house victims from Hurricane Katrina, host young and fledgling congregations at worship, and warehouse the San Antonio Junior League’s Christmas toy program.

But, the project cranked into high gear last year when the San Antonio YMCA agreed to partner with Trinity in moving their downtown facilities to the location. As a result, TriPoint now hosts a state-of-the-art fitness center its north side, and the Grace Coffee Café on its south side. Folks from all over the city are now gathering for exercise, fellowship, worship, and conversation because of Trinity’s remarkable vision of outreach.

We were met in the parking lot of TriPoint by our good friend, Rene Balderas, the chief architect for the project. Rene and Liz and their three beautiful girls joined Trinity during our ministry there, and it is a great gratification to see his ample creative energies come to fruition in such a facility. My colleague Jaime Puente, who joined our ministry team at Trinity, and who was responsible for much of the concept and program development of TriPoint, gave us the tour. Isaac and Cindy Rodriguez, who also united with Trinity on our pastoral watch, operate the Grace Coffee Cafe.

Simply put, we were stunned. The place is breathtaking. What was a gigantic box a short time ago is now a dazzling recruitment center for the Kingdom of God.

After the dedication, we moved to the main campus for a barbeque supper and worship celebration. We hardly got to take a bite of our brisket because of our many wonderful friends greeting us, welcoming us back home.

Who needs food when there is such nourishing fellowship?

Then we moved down the Musselman Corridor to the sanctuary where we joined together in a rousing celebration of gratitude, remembrance, renewal, and hope. Through numerous testimonies and video presentations, we were reminded of Trinity’s rich 60 year history—and challenged to dedicate ourselves anew to the work of Christ through us far into the future.

The next morning, Pastor Les presented his inspired vision of a coordinated and interfacing ministry of Trinity Baptist Church in three locations—the main campus, the Ruble Community Center, and TriPoint—and gave insightful theological interpretation to this tripartite ministry around the doctrine of the Trinity: God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. It was imaginative pulpit work, and we left energized for the journey ahead.

God is good to give us this sweet time of reunion and reaffirmation. We are grateful.

Glad reunion, as my pastor John Claypool would say.

My little Trinity friend told his mother at bedtime Sunday night, as she tucked him in, “Mom, now I get to miss Pastor Charlie all over again.”

True. All reunions end.

But they would not be nearly so glad if they didn’t strike resonance within us for another place, provide us with intimation of another time, and lead us to T.S. Eliot's happy conclusion that we will someday “arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.”

2009-06-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

Disfellowship and Dismay

The decision of the Southern Baptist Convention to find Broadway Baptist Church not in friendly cooperation is a missed opportunity for the denomination to reverse its regressive slide and take a small, safe step in the direction of inclusiveness.

For a year now, both Broadway and Southern Baptist leaders have worked diligently to maintain its historic, 127 year relationship. The ties that bind the church and denomination are strong and numerous, particularly given Broadway’s close relationship with Southwestern Seminary. Though archaic today, the Southern Baptist Training Union was launched in Broadway Baptist Church. (Anyone who has ever actually had to endure Training Union classes might conclude Broadway deserves to be ousted for introducing such an uninteresting program to Baptist life.)

Last summer a motion was made by a North Carolina pastor to remove Broadway from the Southern Baptist Convention on the grounds that the church was in violation of Article III of the SBC Constitution which prohibits churches from taking any action “to affirm, approve, or endorse homosexual behavior.” How he concluded such a thing is a mystery; he has never had any formal communication with the church.

Nevertheless, the motion was referred to the Executive Committee of the Convention which opened up a dialogue that was largely respectful and gracious. A spirit of concord and mutual understanding prevailed in our conversations and correspondence. A number of Southern Baptist leaders were helpful and constructive in behind-the-scenes ways to bring the matter to the positive conclusion of Broadway’s continued friendly cooperation with the SBC.

It became clear early on that the Executive Committee did not wish to disfellowship Broadway. They seemed painfully aware of the negative, intolerant image of the SBC in American public life, and were determined not to do anything more to contribute to that image. Furthermore, the Committee appeared to embody more diversity and complexity than I had imagined.

We explained before the Committee that Broadway has never entertained any formal order of business before the congregational body that constitutes an endorsement of homosexual behavior. We further explained that church membership and congregational service in no way denotes ratification of the behavior of the individual holding that membership and performing that service.

Discussions were candid and thorough. More conservative voices on the Executive Committee wanted Broadway to do something clearly not required by the SBC Constitution: take formal congregational action to condemn homosexual behavior. This extraordinary measure has not been required of any other SBC church. It would be unprecedented and unauthorized. Such requirement repeatedly surfaced in our deliberations, and each time the Executive Committee backed off it.

Our presentations were thoughtfully and hospitably received. A spirit of Christian reconciliation emerged. Several Executive Committee members privately questioned the SBC’s authority to pursue the matter. I felt we had a historic opportunity to move the denomination in a progressive direction. It seemed that the Committee was prepared to receive our direct, good-faith testimony of continued cooperation rather than scurrilous allegations from unnamed sources outside our congregation. (Perhaps when we finish purging our church roles of homosexual persons, we can get to work on weeding out the gossips.)

The breakdown came when those advocating the more rigorous constitutional test won the day. It became clear several weeks ago from the Executive Committee that Broadway would have to implement measures to identify, isolate, and distinguish our gay and lesbian members from the rest of the congregation in order to be found in friendly cooperation. Of course, conscience, congregational autonomy, and common decency prohibit us from doing so.

Now, it appears that the constitutional language as presently stated in Article III is not sufficient. It is not enough for cooperating Southern Baptist churches simply to take no action to affirm homosexual behavior. They must now take formal action explicitly to disapprove such behavior.

Every Southern Baptist church of any size has homosexual members. These friends pray with us, sing with us, give with us, serve with us, and take the Body and Blood of Christ at the table of the Lord with us. Will the test imposed upon Broadway by the denomination now be required of all the churches?

The recommendation to disfellowship Broadway was unanimously passed in the Executive Committee. It was approved by the Convention without discussion. Not even one lone solitary dissenting voice. Such uniformity of thought and silence of conscience means that the SBC remains Baptist in name only.

The moral legalism inherent in the Southern Baptist Convention’s decision indicates the spiritual disease infecting and destroying our Baptist body today. Instead of focusing our energies of love on a lonely and hurting world, we are obsessed with endlessly parsing out arcane legalities designed to assert our own moral purity and superiority.

It is a sound and fury signifying nothing.

2009-02-06T19:13:00.000-08:00

Corley Elizabeth

Our first grandchild, Corley Elizabeth McCormick, arrived on the planet this afternoon around 2:00. She came in weighing a sturdy 8 lbs., 7 ozs. and sporting thick shocks of black hair. She takes the maiden name of her paternal grandmother.

Proud parents are our son, Chad, and his lovely wife, Mary Beth. Chad manages the 100,000 acre Cargile Ranch near Mertzen, Texas and Mary Beth teaches middle school in San Angelo.

Jana and I are beside ourselves with joy. Universal testimony to grandparenthood said we would be, but such reports were understated. Joy like this cannot be spoken.

Mary Beth is resting now, doing quite well after her good work this day. We are grateful and humbled by this miracle of birth, and mindful that such a miracle is replicated generously and innumerably by God each day. Thank you all for the loving solidarity of prayer and celebration with us on this grand occasion.

The southern poet, James Agee, said: "Every time a child is born the potentiality of the human race is born again."

It is Eden all over in our home tonight.

2009-01-28T07:16:00.000-08:00

Why Don't Progressive Churches Do Evangelism?

One of the oddest ironies of contemporary Christianity in America is the inability-- or unwillingness-- of progressive churches to evangelize.

These are the churches with the most excellent values of inclusiveness and empowerment. It is axiomatic that openness of heart and mind to all people is a principle ingredient to congregational growth.

But, it is precisely these churches that are not only not increasing in membership but are actually in clear decline.

This is puzzling.

The core enterprise of original Christianity was to extend to the world an invitation to gather together in a New Community of Love.

It was the kerygma of that euanggelion around which the first disciples came together: the life, ministry, death, resurrection, and return of Christ. The very nature of news calls for it to be disseminated and announced. The very purpose of this news is to create something “new,” that is, the community of crucified and resurrected persons called the Church of Jesus.

The word we translate “evangelism” was initially used to herald the coming visit of Roman ruler to a far-flung province. The church, subversive movement that it was, co-opted that secular term to convey the arrival of the only true King, and the establishment of the only exhaustive and eternal kingdom. The concept at the point of its inception connoted a town crier, a communal notice, an open announcement, a public address.

There are old arguments for why progressive churches aren't evangelistic:

1.) Evangelism has been done so coercively and inauthentically by the fundamentalists, that progressives want little to do with it.
2.) Progressive churches have a style and methodology-- liturgical worship, scholarly Scripture study, etc.-- that do not appeal to the zeitgeist of of our day.
3.) Faith is an intensely private matter that is not properly addressed in public ways. Evangelism requires a necessary intrusion into this privacy.
4.) Demographic forces have adversely affected the progressive churches of our cities more than the conservative churches of our suburbs. "Red state/blue state" now means "red church/ blue church."

These strike me as tired dichotomies that are increasingly irrelevant. First, we no longer have a "Christ-haunted" culture, as Flannery O'Conner described the South of her day with its slam-bang, hard-boiled religious fervor. Second, it is precisely the historic, rich traditionism and symbolism that is increasingly attractive to emerging generations. Third, the old public/private divide is all but erased in our day of Oprah and reality TV. Fourth, it seems the election of President Obama reflects a growing dissatisfaction with the polarization of our hyper-sorted national community. Furthermore, economic dynamics are bringing families back into the centers of our cities and away from the sprawling suburbs.

So, why can't churches like ours be evangelistic? Is there some other reason?

2009-01-20T10:06:00.000-08:00

Invocation

We offered this opening prayer in our worship on Sunday at Broadway Baptist Church:

O Lord, we come before you today to celebrate you in spirit and truth. But, just because we want to do that does not mean it will automatically happen. Help us, God. Guide our worship. Let the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight.

We bring prayers before you today especially for our nation. We have sinned. We ask forgiveness for our pride, arrogance, naivete, materialism, idolatry and injustice.

Turn our hearts toward you, O God. We lift our nation up to you love and peace.

Hear our prayer for Mr. Bush and his family as they leave the presidency, and for Mr. Obama and his family as they enter it.

Capture Barack Obama's head with your wisdom. Deepen his heart with your compassion. Strengthen his hand with your courage.

Keep us and all the nations of the world in your protection and peace.

Through Jesus Christ-- King of all kings, Ruler of all rulers, Lord of all lords-- who lives and reigns with you and with the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.

2009-01-10T07:11:00.000-08:00

Aerial Desdemona

Yesterday gave me a view of the ranch I haven't yet seen.

My friend James Adyelotte, faithful Broadway member and winsome metereologist for the NBC affiliate in Dallas/Fort Worth, flew me around greater Desdemona in his Cessna Cardinal.

James is a delightful spirit, quick with laughter but engaging in serious matters of faith also. For him, flying has a spiritual dimension, and he took it up several years ago as a step of courage at a difficult juncture in his personal life.

We met at the small airport in Stephenville, 25 miles east of our home, and in no time we were up in the air heading back west toward Desdemona.

Take off and landing got my attention, but the flight itself was smooth and relaxing. It was brilliantly clear weather, perfect for flying.

Jana informed me that she had taken out a million dollar policy on me just in case. Nothing like the reassurance of a devoted wife.

So interesting seeing the ranch from the air. To look at the land panoramically, as a comprehensive whole, undemarcated in vision by road or fence or physical feature, plants a different topographical perspective in the mind. It is an impression of smallness, yet a significant smallness, and the critical need for stewardship of that particular small ground.

It had been some time since I last flew in small private aircraft, and the experience is invigorating. You become a bird.

2008-12-26T12:06:00.000-08:00

There Is A Place For You

The Christmas story holds endless fascination for us for many reasons. One of the characters who captures my imagination in this drama is the unnamed innkeeper.

As I see the movie playing in my head about this holy night, there are many thousands of folks on the roads of Judea that week, each returning to his or her hometown to be registered by the government for the census, as was the decree of the empire. Awful time for a pregnant woman to have to travel, but that was the law.

The trip from Nazareth to Joseph’s hometown of Bethlehem was over 60 miles, and took a number of days to travel. Mary was heavy with child and bone tired. Joseph had already approached several inns along the road that late afternoon, but they were all already full. No room. It was getting late and Mary couldn’t go much further.

The anonymous innkeeper of Luke’s immortal story sized up the situation instinctively. He too had no vacancy in his establishment, but instead of turning the young couple away, he performed a simple act of kindness: he made a place for them.

He asked the young couple to indulge him a few minutes. He disappeared to the stables where the livestock were boarded for the evening. He found one empty stall that he carefully swept. He placed fresh hay on the dirt floor. He cleared out a feed trough and lined it with the cleanest saddle blankets he could lay hold of. It wasn’t much, but it would be better than a cold hillside.

Then he led the holy family to the barn of Messiah birth.

He could have easily and perhaps justifiably gone about his business. He was stretched to capacity that night with so many guests, distracted by so many needs. But, in the midst of all the stress and demand of that fateful evening, he took the time. He made a place.

The biblical texts of course do not mention an innkeeper. And make only a singular and brief notation of an inn. But, in our imagination we see an individual of exceptional moral compassion and sensitivity, who employed a simple kindness that played a critical role in the arrival of the Christ child.

I see another scene in the movie in my head: Jesus’ mother and father telling him this story over and over again throughout his boyhood moral formation, about a stranger’s generosity that made his birth possible, a surprising provision on a cold night, and a Divine Providence so ingenious that it transformed the unlikeliest of persons into an angel of mercy.

There are angels dispatched for us from on high right now, if we have the cinematic and sanctified imagination to believe it. They are busy acting on our behalf, bringing about our good, transforming our circumstances of scarcity into interventions of abundance. They are clearing out the refuse, preparing what Hemingway piercingly described as that “clean, well-lighted place” we all long for.

Long no longer. It’s Christmas. In Jesus, God has made room.

There is a place for you.

2008-12-23T15:53:00.000-08:00

The Birth of a Baby

Of all the dangerous and miraculous stories of scripture, the story of the Virgin Birth has captured the imagination of the church in a unique way.

Historic Christianity insists on embracing the Virgin Birth precisely because it synthesizes brilliantly the core imagination of God becoming flesh. It calls us to an order only love can create.

A young Jewish woman is impregnated by the Holy Spirit, and carries a baby inside her out of wedlock, and then is informed by an angel that the baby she is carrying is the Savior of the world. A little illegitimate child as Messiah. A young woman who transcends the narrow confines of her social, economic, and cultural context to give birth to Messiah. It really is the quintessential impossible story. And that’s why the church has always insisted that we embrace it.

But, the story of the virgin birth is also about the equally high purpose of establishing Christ's humanity. The mystery of the incarnation is found in a Messiah who gestates in the belly of young Jewish peasant girl for nine months only to be delivered in a labor of love that changed the whole world. The doctrine of the virgin birth was originally developed to counter the Gnostic notion that Jesus was not fully human, did not develop from something so tiny and tenuous as a fertilized egg, did not grow as a fetus inside a teenage girl, did not cause that young mama to puke every morning for weeks, was not heaved out into the world in a painful and bloody birth like every other human on the planet—and in a smelly barn with livestock at that. You can’t get more physical and sensate than a birth.

Jana and I have big news: we are going to be grandparents in February. A little girl already named Corley Elizabeth will be born to Chad and Mary Beth. I give you fair warning right now—you won’t be able to live with me. Grandparent names have already been claimed. Jana will be ‘Nana’ and I will be ‘Papa Charlie.’ Of course, that little girl can call me anything she wants to! Our precious Mary Beth miscarried twice, so we see this baby as a miracle. But, then again, aren’t they all?

We cannot pay homage to the god of science, and worship at the altar of human rationalism, and celebrate the story of the virgin birth at the same time. We are called to suspend and bracket science, to trust that there is an order beyond what we can analyze.

We have to be embarrassed, because, as the great novelist Flannery O’Connor wryly commented, “Mystery is a great embarrassment to the modern mind.”

2008-11-25T22:15:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving Eating

I learned early on that eating was a major motif of the Christian experience. I’ve been trying to practice that part of the faith ever since.

As a child, every time I was at church I had something good to eat. It started out with cookies and Kool Aid in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School, then graduated to donuts and coffee later on, then progressed to world class pot lucks and marvelous summer ice cream suppers and now to the brilliant meals I get to enjoy here at Broadway Baptist. Broadway should win the Nobel Prize for eating.

When I was a young country preacher, the defining characteristic of a successful ministry had nothing to do with preaching or pastoral care, but rather with the way you could pack it in at the dinner table. I learned after I first arrived at the West Point Baptist Church of Matanzas, Kentucky, that if I simply “chowed down” I would likely make it in this new, strange, wonderful work I had been called to. One of my predecessors in that little rural fellowship possessed the fatal flaw of being a finicky eater and those country folks talked about him in serious, pitying tones throughout my entire tenure, as if he had contracted bubonic plague. I determined early on that I would not commit that mistake.

This holy centrality of food would move to a whole new level at revival time. The pastor and guest evangelist would attend a daily moveable feast of three huge meals a day, breakfast, lunch and supper. One alone would have been more than sufficient, but the celebration of meals in folks’ homes was a high spiritual value for country people. So, we rotated through the entire congregation in a week’s time and feasted like kings. Even my hardy indulgence for eating was severely tested. I learned to pace myself through these rituals and to apportion and position food on my plate in such a manner that I could not only gastronomically negotiate it but also satisfy and honor my ever-watchful hosts.

Thanksgiving poses a dilemma for us. On the one hand, we want to enter into the gratitude and warm-heartedness of the season, feeling the peace and goodwill that comes from our abundance of riches and provisions we are fortunate enough, simply by virtue of our national origin, to experience. But, on the other hand, the obscene bounty that I have just described presents an insurmountable contradiction and cruel irony in a world of deprivation and disease, want and hunger. This brilliant eating is the exception to the awful rule in our human family.

923 million people across the world are hungry. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes--one child every five seconds. In the course of the sermon you hear this Sunday, 250 children will die because they don’t have enough to eat.

Most poor people who are hungry deal with chronic undernourishment and vitamin or mineral deficiencies. The result is stunted growth, weakness and heightened susceptibility to illness. Poor nutrition and calorie deficiencies cause nearly one in three people to die prematurely or have disabilities, according to the World Health Organization.

Children are the most at risk of undernourishment. In 2006, about 9.7 million children died before they reached their fifth birthday. Almost all of these deaths occurred in developing countries, 4/5 of them in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the two regions that also suffer from the highest rates of hunger and malnutrition.

Most of these deaths are attributed, not to outright starvation, but to diseases that affect vulnerable children whose bodies have been weakened by hunger. Every year, more than 20 million low-birth weight babies are born in developing countries. The four most common childhood illnesses are diarrhea, acute respiratory illness, malaria and measles. These illnesses are both preventable and treatable.

It seems to me that the most authentic way for us to express our gratitude to God this Thanksgiving season is to give generously to hunger relief efforts so that we can bring some of these children to the table of provision. (Click on http://www.wvi.org/wvi/wviweb.nsf for a good, reputable organization called World Vision.)

Even—no especially—in this season of economic downturn, let’s show not only the ingenuity of eating, but also the ingenuity of giving so that others in our global family may enjoy a modicum of what we lavish in daily.

Franklin Roosevelt said, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”

2008-11-07T15:35:00.000-08:00

New Posting at The High Calling

My latest posting for The High Calling can be found at:

http://www.thehighcalling.org/Library/ViewLibrary.asp?LibraryID=4592

Founded by my friend and fellow church member, Howard Butt, this fine website focuses on the presence of God in all respective vocational callings. I am privileged to write for this organization and encourage your frequent reading of their uplifting material.

2008-11-05T15:58:00.000-08:00

"The Arc of God's Justice Is Long, But It Does Touch the Earth."

I am particularly proud to be an American on this historic day.

As one who grew up in the bitter racism of a segregated society in south Alabama, I rejoice today that the final color barrier in American life has been broken by the election of the first African-American president in our nation’s history.

People of good will all over our nation, regardless of political party and electoral allegiance, are touched on this historic occasion.

We have endured a most grueling presidential campaign. The genius of democracy has once again been demonstrated in this simmering stewpot called America. 120 million Americans cast votes in calm and security, with not one single reported incident of reprisal. From sea to shining sea, red and yellow, black and white, rich and poor, old and young celebrated their most treasured civic resource: the right to vote.

As Senator McCain put it in his concession speech, with characteristic directness, “The American people have spoken and they have spoken clearly.” He seemed to sense the significance of the moment with his tone of remarkable graciousness and his dramatic conclusion, “Americans never hide from history. We make history."

Senator Obama struck a similar conciliatory note in his acceptance speech, saying of McCain, “He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader."

As Barack Obama was being chosen by the American family to serve as its president for the next four years, we were holding renewal services in the First Baptist Church of Aliceville, Alabama. We were graced by the presence of numerous African-Americans in the congregation, over a couple of dozen. The pastor later told me that this was the most racially integrated worship celebration he has had the privilege of leading as pastor of this fine fellowship.

I have had a line from Dr. King in my mind all day long: "the arc of God's justice in long, but it does touch the earth."

We have come a long, long way on the journey toward justice in this country. Only a short time ago, that day when Americans would be judged “on the strength of their character rather than the color of their skin” remained only a distant dream.

But, today, that dream has become reality.

2008-08-27T22:53:00.000-07:00

August 27, 2008

Today is my father’s birthday. He would have been 90 years old.

Memory is a faculty so effective, that I sometimes feel my father’s presence is physical and immediate. His exuberance for life fuels that memory. Augustine, in his Confessions, has a lengthy reflection on the power of remembrance, asserting that faith would not be possible without memory. Certainly, love and hope would not be possible without it either.

Shortly before his own death, Robert Penn Warren wrote a poem about his grandfather entitled "Reinterment, " pursuing this mysterious and elusive idea that memory keeps something alive. He fixed his concern not on his own impending end, but on the death all over again of his beloved grandfather, whose memory would not be held by any living being once Warren died.

I had a good visit with Mom tonight about Dad, reliving a few episodes and occasions, laughing a little. And sharing in the sadness of his loss.

My brother, Francis, said something in passing about grief several days ago that I’ve thought much about since: We don’t get over a death. We get used to it.

2008-08-08T15:51:00.000-07:00

The Celebration of Worship at Broadway

Brett and Carol Younger had told me in glowing terms what an enrichment worship is at Broadway Baptist Church, but one has to be in that magnificent House of God and with those beautiful people of God to really get it.

I got it these past two Sabbath days.

The ‘wow’ factor works within you from the moment you step into the sanctuary. One immediately notices the stunning stained-glass “Invitation Window” above the chancel depicting our Lord standing, waiting, with outstretched arms, for us to come and lay our burdens down before the presence of a Loving God. An invitation so wondrously extended simply can’t be refused.

Then, the worshipper hears the ministry of the Cliburn Organ. This remarkable instrument reflects Broadway’s investment in the great musical traditions of the church. Such an investment requires courage in a day when the church is going cheap for popular expressions that purport to be “praise music” but, in my mind, hardly come close.

When the choir stood, I knew they meant business for God. I have been aware of the renowned Broadway choir for years, but there is a vast difference between hearing of and actual hearing. This is choral magic, and it fills that incredible room with a super-charged spiritual energy. Such power does not just happen, but is the result of a practiced offering to God that must be disciplined under deft musical and spiritual direction.

The litanies, readings, reflections and prayers strike a resounding thematic chord that sustain the Word of God throughout the worship so that we might, as the Bible says, “hide it in our hearts.” Such an inner hiding has a better chance of happening if Scripture has more than one shot at us. Broadway lets the Scripture speak, not just once, as if it were incidental, but multiple times. As if it were, say, central. The relative silence of the Bible in corporate worship in our churches is one of the many contradictions glaring at us in our Baptist tradition these days, but this hypocrisy will end if this church has anything to do with it.

After the benediction, you aren't finished worshipping. You reverently remain seated through a postlude that skillfully incorporates elements from the preceeding hour of worship into a musical montage for us to take with us.

Several of my students from the seminary at Mercer University will be in Ft. Worth tomorrow, and will attend our services. I am glad. They will have an expereience that worship is an accurate word for.

2008-07-20T20:53:00.000-07:00

Let The Weeds Grow

Today Jana and I worshipped with the Second Baptist Church of Lubbock, the beloved fellowship I served from 1989-2001. I was the guest proclaimer, the third such privilege I have had in recent months.

My text was the gospel lection, Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds recorded in Matthew chapter 13. In this story, the rule of God is said to be like a carefully planted field in which wheat and weeds grow together and are harvested together, with the angels (not us) separating the wheat from the weeds at the end of the age (not now).

It was a timely text for my visit.

This splendid congregation took a chance on me when they called me as a still-unformed 31 year old minister. In short, they had more weed than wheat in their inexperienced pastor. But, they embodied the wisdom of today’s gospel lesson in letting this weed grow along with the wheat. They were longsuffering and gentle with me, allowing me to stumble and blunder my way into pastoral development. As a result of this “tender mercy,” we had a marvelous journey together that we will always celebrate before God.

My oft-repeated refrain to my seminary students is this: it is good churches that make good pastors, and not the other way around.

I think today’s sermon was something of a self-coaching talking point for the way I hope to conduct pastoral ministry from this point forward. I am recognizing more and more that our faith communities are fragile entities, easily beset by fears and insecurities, not given to instinctive capacities for change and adaptablity. I have made my share of leadership mistakes by advancing agenda for congregational change that were simply too pungent for immediate implementation.

After the service, those beautiful people of God at Second B waited patiently in a receiving line to offer their blessing to me, to remind me that long ago they saw wheat instead of weeds in me, and to admonish me, as I reenter the pastoral ministry I so dearly love, to go and engage in this imaginative act of seeing too.

2008-06-30T21:21:00.000-07:00

Broadway Baptist Church

The Deacon Body of the Broadway Baptist Church of Ft. Worth has voted unanimously to call me as Interim Pastor. I will begin my ministry with them on July 27.

They have graciously allowed me to fulfill longstanding preaching engagements before I begin.

In an interesting and unusually ironic turn, Broadway's superb pastor, Brett Younger, will succeed me as the preaching teacher at McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta. Brett is not only a fine preacher, but is a student of preaching, having earned a doctorate in homiletics. He will be a gift to the seminary in Atlanta.

Brett and many others speak affirmingly and tenderly of Broadway. As is often the case, media accounts of Broadway's present congregational situation are inadequately descriptive. It is very difficult for the press accurately to characterize sensitive and nuanced congregational dynamics that shape a community of humans making their life together. When they try, they invariably fall short.

Broadway's open hospitality and embrace of all of God's children is powerfully symbolized by the stunning stained-glass window facing the worshippers in their magnificent sanctuary. It is called the "invitation window" and depicts Christ standing with arms outstretched to receive anyone who will come to him. This invitational heart has been a core value for Broadway throughout its history, and Jana and I look forward to partnering for a season with them in this mission.

Our job will be to provide pastoral proclamation and presence during the season while Broadway is searching for a permanent minister. I am honored to serve this historic, city-center Texas church, and wish to extend an open invitation to all to pray for us, encourage us, and come alongside us to help build a bridge to a future full with high purpose for God's work in the world.

2008-04-04T03:37:00.000-07:00

Martin Luther King Jr. International Board of Preachers

I was inducted today into the Martin Luther King Jr. International Board of Preachers at Dr. King's alma mater, Morehouse College.

We started the day with a lecture by Dr. Lawerence Carter, Dean of the King Chapel at Morehouse, on the influences shaping King's life and ministry. The Chapel halls are adorned with oil portraits of spiritual leaders who have advanced God's Kingdom of justice and love in the world, and Dean Carter (photo) deftly connected all of their stories and contributions together in a wonderful reminder of our "single strand of destiny."

Then, we moved to the chapel for the induction ceremony. The massive pipe organ sounded the keynote of the day with an improvisation on the old hymn, "Great Is Thy Faithfulness." The renowned Morehouse Men's Choir sang an a cappella rendition of "Everytime I Feel the Spirit." The Rev. Billy Kyles (photo), who with the now deceased Rev. Ralph Abernathy, was the last person to see King alive before his untimely death 40 years ago today, preached a powerful message, "I Was There To Be a Witness." Indeed, the sermon was more prophetic challenge for the future than historical remembrance of the past. I wondered not only about my witness, but that of the young students in the congregation, some of them my own from Mercer University. How will we fulfill our Lord's prophecy and charge to be witnesses to the uttermost parts of the world? Read more about Rev. Kyles' sermon at:
http://www.morehouse.edu/news/archives/001299.html

It was an extra pleasure to celebrate this occasion with my San Antonio pastor friends, the Rev. Carlton Allen and the Rev. Thuman Walker (photo). We remembered together our collaboration in the citywide Martin Luther King Jr. worship service we were privileged to host at Trinity Baptist several years ago, as well as our other joint projects of racial reconciliation.

This recognition is perhaps the highest honor of my pastoral career. It is a most moving occasion for both Jana and me, and a tribute to the loving and inclusive faith communities I have been privileged to serve throughout my ministry.

2007-10-11T05:03:00.000-07:00

Pastoral Transition

One of the issues shaping the health of the churches today is pastoral transition: conveying the spiritual authority of the community of faith from one minister to another. Much of the time, it is being done exceedingly poorly.

As a pastor who has followed long leadership tenures both in Lubbock and San Antonio, I am in a unique position to give perspective on the matter. I have postponed commentary on the subject for over a year since leaving San Antonio in order to gain a measure of clarity and analysis about this complex, emotional issue.

In August, Associated Baptist Press did two pieces on pastoral leadership succession that merit your reading. I have posted the links below:

http://www.abpnews.com/2709.article
http://www.abpnews.com/2710.article

2007-07-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

From Pulpit to Lectern

When Dean Alan Culpepper invited me to teach preaching at McAfee this past year, I had that curious mixture of anticipation and apprehension that attends any new challenge.

On the one hand, the proclamation of God’s Good News has been the compelling enterprise of my life for almost thirty years of pastoral ministry. There is nothing that captures a parish pastor’s imagination and energies more forcefully than preaching.

But, on the other hand, the extent of my teaching experience had consisted of substituting in the county high school of the western Kentucky rural community where I served my first pastorate. I feared that perhaps my pedagogical skills might have atrophied over the past couple of decades since those occasional forays into the classroom!

There is a world of difference between the practice of preaching and the instruction of it.

As anyone who has had to preach—or had to hear-- sermons can attest, preaching is an inexact activity, much more art than science. Subjectivity prevails. Intuition, interpretation, imagery, style, rhythm, and timing are key. There is no homiletical “right way,” and the idiosyncracies of human personality more than a little bit apply. How does one instruct such things?

I discovered early on in my pastoral career a piece of wisdom that I have tried to follow ever since: good churches make good pastors—not the other way around. That old saw had served me well for a long time. Lacking any better core procedural principle as I embarked on the journey from parish to academy, I took that one into the classroom with me: my students and colleagues would guide and teach me. The ones I’m charged to serve would show me how to maximize our time of learning together.

That hunch has, blessedly, proven abundantly true this past year.

The central feature of McAfee’s special life together is community. Professors and students enjoy a quality of personal relationship rare in academic culture. There is a character of collegiality to what happens in the learning environment at McAfee. Values such as partnership, dialogue, engagement, and practice are held highly and cultivated carefully.

The knowing/being/doing missional triad is more than a mantra at McAfee. It is the philosophical and operational template of this place of training. What is done with hand and felt in heart is just as important as what is thought in head.
This tripartite approach to learning is particularly critical in the area of preaching. The practice and the study go hand-in-hand. As every working preacher knows, each delivery of a sermon is the preparation for the next one! Therefore, we not only read and reflect and write about preaching. In our school, we do it! It is the doing that shapes our learning.

Once I located myself in this understanding, I found my sea legs. The rhythm of study and practice is invaluable for the ministry of proclamation: preaching in the churches on the Sabbath week-by-week on one hand; coming together for inquiry and discovery in the classroom during the week on the other.

The year has been a Providential season of growth and regrouping. These wonderful McAfee minister-professors and ministers-in-training have greatly enabled and encouraged me, and I am grateful for the opportunity to join them on this exploration.

Because of them, I’ve learned that the journey from pulpit to lectern isn’t such a long one after all.

2007-04-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

Your High Calling

It is my delight to emerge from my cyber-hibernation these past three months and reenter the blogosphere with a strong endorsement for www.thehighcalling.org

The High Calling of our Daily Work is a ministry of my good friend and former parishioner Howard Butt. For decades Howard has been a pioneering advocate for the awareness and celebration of God's presence in the workplace. He and his creative team contend that God moves powerfully in our respective vocational contexts if we will but train our eyes and ears to see such activity.

Stands to reason. Seems to me that the forty-hour work week constitutes a setting at least as plausible for divine epiphany than our one-hour-a-week sanctuaries.

I remember first encountering this simple spiritual idea in seminary when Glenn Hinson required us to read a book entitled The Practice of the Presence of God by a medieval monk named Brother Lawerence. Lawerence made the astonishing discovery that God was just as present to him among the pots and pans in the monastery kitchen while washing dishes, than kneeling in the majestic cathedral at prayer. Indeed, he washed those dishes gloria Dei.

Martin Luther King, Jr had a similar spiritual breakthrough when he gave his working class congregations the charge to go about their daily tasks with a sense of dignity and self-worth. If you find yourself sweeping streets, Dr. King admonished, then "sweep streets like Michaelangelo sculpted statues, sweep streets like Raphael painted pictures, sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, and some day all the hosts of heaven and earth will say about you, 'There goes a great street sweeper!'"

Even a cursory reading of the gospels leads one to conclude that Jesus found God more fully on the streets than in the sanctuary.

Please take the time now to browse around this crisp, newly updated website. Wouldn't it be a good thing for us to learn to look for God in the everydayness of where we live and move and make our being? If Jesus is any indication, our God-sightings Monday through Saturday will be at least as frequent as those on Sunday.

2007-02-04T05:24:00.000-08:00

Interim Pastoring

The folks of the Immanuel Baptist Church of Nashville have called me to serve as their Interim Pastor. I begin with this morning's worship celebration.

God is good to connect me with this community of faith. Immanuel has served as a beacon of creative, progressive ministry in the city of Nashville for over a century. I will take the mantle of leadership during this season of transition from David George, who has served this congregation with intelligence and distinction for thirty years. A search team is already actively at work to find the pastor God has prepared for this fellowship, and I have every confidence this happy discovery will be made expeditiously.

(In the God's Small World category, David was ordained as a young minister by none other than the Trinity Baptist Church of San Antonio! It is instructive for us to remember that the ancient celebration of the "communion of the saints" means that all God's people of all ages and in all places are wonderfully and intimately connected, far closer than the vaunted six degrees sociologists say separate the human family on the planet at large...)

We are learning that the ministry of the interim pastor, particularly in succession of a long-tenured minister, is strategic for the health of our churches. Pastoral bonds with a congregation are deep and abiding. There are complex dynamics of grief that must be processed in pastoral leadership transitions-- even when those transitions are timely and appropriate. Mature congregations are seeing the need more and more for carefully planned and executed interim seasons between outgoing and incoming senior ministers, during which these myriad emotions and dynamics can be confronted, examined, and understood.

Even as Immanuel has called me, Trinity is wisely embracing this "best practice" in the call of my friend Randall O'Brien, Provost at Baylor University, as Interim Pastor following my tenure there. Reports of Randall's ministry are already universally positive, and Jana and I offer him and Kay our ongoing prayers and support as they lead that special group of Christians who convene at 319 E. Mulberry in the Alamo City each Sabbath!

As I look out the window in writing this, there is a blanket of snow covering the ground here in Nashville. This lovely Belle Meade neighborhood where Immanuel is located has been transformed into something storybook beautiful.

Reminds me of the imaginative promise of Scripture: "All things are becoming new."

2007-01-09T01:17:00.000-08:00

Dispatch From Germany, Part III

There is a stunning Protestant church in Trier, where we have spent the last several days, that was constructed upon the very edifice first consecrated to the Roman emperor. The power of the Gospel to convert that which is secular into something sacred always astonishes. Indeed, this church is yet another gorgeous structure of old Christendom, almost as high as it is long, and stands, as do so many in this country, as a testimony to Christ's transformative genius.

But, the inspirational story, like most human stories, has a dark side.

In 1930's and '40's, this congregation was deeply complicit in the Nazi regime of terror. Its pastors cooperated with the oppressive authorities, like most ministers of the Nazi era. In fact, there are photographs of young boys being confirmed in their Nazi youth uniforms. Not only did this church refuse band together with the several other courageous "Confessing Churches" (made famous by Bonhoeffer's witness) of the region to resist the cruel order, it ostricized those members of its own congregation who were critical of Hitler and his policies. Of particular horror was the stance of the church toward the Jewish people of their community.

The Allied bombing of April of 1944 severely damaged the church. The ornate wood chancel and altar were destroyed by fire, as was the organ. Everything inside the church was demolished. The only thing remaining were the rock walls erected by the Romans so long ago, perhaps a reminder that moral lessons learned by one epoch have a way of being strangely forgotten by successive ones.

When the fire swept through the church, townspeople say that the pipes of the enormous organ began mysteriously playing by themselves. As the local lore has it, the windstorm created by the destruction forced air through the pipes, creating a haunting dirge that could be heard throughout the city.

A divine recital of judgment upon the cowardice and betrayal of a Christian people who forgot who they were.

2007-01-03T15:57:00.000-08:00

Dispatch From Germany, Part II

We have made our way from Frankfurt over to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a Disney-charming, remarkably preserved medieval village dating to the 12th century. It is ringed by the picturesque Tauber River, which we can clearly see from our hotel balcony, and nestled quaintly among the surrounding hills.

When the Thirty Years War of the 17th century devestated most of Germany, this place was fortunately spared, and, thereby, frozen in time instead of updated and modernized with successive waves of cultural development. Its cottages and cobblestones make an excellent setting for postcard-perfect German scenery.

But, I was shaken from this pastoral reverie with today's visit to a museum of medieval criminal justice. The museum houses one of the most extensive collection of medieval torture implements in the world. It's one thing to see this stuff in movies, quite another to look at it right in front of you. The cruelest and crudest devices for wresting confessions from suspects were on display for perfectly cultured and refined people like us to view: racks, ropes, cranks, pulleys, pinchers, gallows, stocks, belts, balls, chains. It was a graphic presentation of human barbarism, an ample justification for why historians refer to those ages in our human story as "dark." As we were all wincing and grimmacing, we were thinking: thank God we don't practice justice so primitively today.

Then, I got back to my hotel room and turned on CNN to see, once again, the now-famous cell phone footage of Saddam Hussein's final seconds, and realized that the continuum between what happened then and what happens now is not all that long, that our contemporary moral superiority isn't justified after all, and that eras like medieval and modern and post-modern may be different with regard to what we drive or how we dress, but not so different in how perfectly civilized people still insist on killing people who kill people-- even murdurous beasts like Saddam-- to show that killing people is wrong.

2007-01-01T16:45:00.000-08:00

Dispatch From Germany

Last night's New Year's Eve celebration here in Frankfurt was a grand-scale spectacle unlike anything I've ever seen.

Jana, Cliff and I made our way around 8:00 p.m. to Sachsenhausen, the old part of the city south of downtown, across the Rhine. Walking to our restaurant, I was scared silly step after step by the explosions of firecrackers nearby.

The tradition here is to celebrate entrepreneurially: each brings his or her own fireworks to ignite on New Year's Eve. Forget controlled, orderly, safe, secure scheduled displays that are carefully choreographed to go off a few minutes before midnight. Rather, think merry mayhem.

After a wonderful Thai supper (the new world order means, among other things, that you can now eat anything anywhere) and a couple of lively German pubs, where we joined in songs we did not know in a language we do not speak, we walked to the riverbank a couple of blocks away. Despite a steady rain, tens of thousands were already lining the Rhine by the time we got there. We managed to stake out a good spot overlooking the river and facing the impressive Frankfurt skyline to the northwest, right across from St. Leonard's Church, one of the oldest protestant churches in the city, where the people of God confirmed Goethe's faith in the 18th century, and where one of the only existing stained-glass windows survived the Allied bombing in '43.

No sooner had we got settled into our vantage point than the show began. Slow at first, but then more and more, minute after minute, myriads of bottle rockets and Roman candles began to detonate all around us and up and down the river for over a mile, wave after colorful wave of fiery sprays in the chilly and wet night sky, a constant barrage of fireworks, made doubly stunning not only by their Rhine reflection dancing on the water's surface but also by the iridescent skyline framing them, and persisting with increasing dazzling fervor for well over an hour, until the final climax minutes before midnight generated yet a new level of ferociously streaming color and fire that culminated in a magnificent pyrotechnic piece de resistance just as the clock struck midnight and St. Leonard's bells pealed for a full half hour.

It was a happy apocalypse, surreal with the smoke and sulfur hanging over the river. Blessedly, we watched from the elevated sidewalk on the bank. The randomness of it all added to the adventure. Scared us at first (well, Jana and me, but not Cliff), but we soon got swept into the delight and magic of it all. The entire thing was splendid, glorious, with the impressive Frankfurt skyline as the backdrop. Shortly after midnight, it began to rain, which only seemed to lubricate the entire affair into a more adamant revelry. As we were climbing in a cab around 1:00 a.m., I turned to see a young policeman chugging down a beer... which bizarre sight I took as a sign that the party was over for us, and that if we wanted to live the 2007 whose advent we had just celebrated, we had better get to the safety and sleep of our hotel.

I got to see the July 4 fireworks on the Mall in Washington D.C. in 1977, but last night was even more amazing. People were mostly well-behaved, a miracle in itself. Everyone's personal participation in it heightened the sensation of the event, like some kind of ancient communal festival that bound all these complete strangers together. Lots of dancing, singing, hugging-- my kind of party.

2006-12-31T08:25:00.000-08:00

God's Grammar For the New Year

At one time or another you will break up, break down, lose out, go broke, give in, get sick, be sad. Life happens.

(Please click on www.thehighcalling.org to read the rest of this article.)

2006-12-31T08:08:00.000-08:00

Staying In Christmas

We can’t stand Christmas for very long.

For the brief 36 hours or so starting around dusk on December 24, we slow down long enough to let the Christmas mystery settle on us. If we don’t kneel at the manger, at least we pause before it. Our hearts tell us in our Christmas Eve services to take the sweet glow of candles and communion with us throughout the week and into the new year. We know it would be right and lovely to do so.

But come the morning of the 26th, and we are ready to get busy again. I have observed this back-to-business compulsion in three busy airports this week—Dallas, Atlanta and Frankfurt (where we are visiting our son Cliff who is stationed nearby). Our highly frenetic society simply can’t stay in Christmas very long. The liturgical calendar calls for us to rejoice in Christmas for a spell, but the vaunted Twelve Days of Christmas is something we experience only in song and never in actual celebration.

We start gearing up for Christmas absurdly early. By Halloween, the American retail machine is in full crank, indoctrinating us on the catechism of materialism, the real American religion. That is, we spend money we don’t have on stuff we don’t need, didn’t know existed shortly before the time of purchase, and will soon no longer want. Our cathedrals are empty and our malls are teeming, thus confirming where our real temples are located. It takes a certain kind of altered state to engage in this orgy of acquisition-- this temple sacrifice-- which is why those saccharine carols play over and over again until we are sufficiently stupefied.

The irony is thick: two months preparing for a feast we hardly take a day to enjoy. It is no surprise that many folks are depressed this time of year. How can any normal human aspire to the ridiculous level of holiday cheer and consumption the popular culture calls us to?

American theologian Howard Thurman wrote something years ago entitled, “Work of Christmas Begins.”

When the song of the angels is stilled,

when the star in the sky is gone,

when the kings and princes are home,

when the shepherds are back with the flocks,

then the work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,

to heal those broken in spirit,

to feed the hungry,

to release the oppressed,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among all peoples,

to make a little music with the heart…

Then the work of Christmas begins.

Instead of thinking about the new year ahead, let’s get back to Christmas. We should never have left. Let’s focus less on resolutions we make today and more on those Jesus made 2000 years ago.

That's the kind of Christmas we can celebrate for twelve days. And a whole lot longer.

2006-11-03T13:18:00.000-08:00

Living Well, Dying Well

As you have sensitively gathered, I have spent this past month in the actual saying goodbye to my daddy, rather than in the reporting and reflecting on it. Thank you all for your plentiful love and prayer for me and my family in this journey. It means more to us than we can possibly convey. That “great cloud” so beautifully described in Scripture has encompassed us in the most comforting witness of love, and we are grateful to you for being a part of it.

Now the right time has come to write again.

My father died as he lived: with dignity and grace. Largely incommunicative during his last three weeks, his presence nevertheless centered us, just as it always had. Unable to tell the stories that have so profoundly ordered our lives, our way of living, we told them for him. Unable to express the sweet affection he always had for his wife and four boys, we tried our best to find that voice in his stead, to replicate that quality of love for him and for each other.

I don’t think I have ever known a man whose impulses of hospitality were so instinctive. He drew you to him, told you convincingly that you belonged, that you had a place. Even the Hospice nurses, whose familiarity with dying and all its hard and holy stages is a daily one, were drawn to Dad. Once, having driven in late from Atlanta, I arrived at the Hospice residence around midnight, and opened the door to my daddy’s room to find a young nurse quarter my daddy’s age bending over him, caressing his forehead. She looked up through moist eyes, and said, “He is such a sweet man.” She was not working, it was not her shift. She simply came by to commune with this sweetness.

Indeed, there was a holiness all around Dad in those last days, an invisible field of sacred energy. You just wanted to be there in that sanctuary with him. Was he praying? Was he remembering? Was he listening to someone else we could not hear? Was he here or somewhere else? We entered this space fearfully and wonderfully. I’ve never known a stillness like this. Dad’s breath was so slight and soundless, and the whole world so reduced and clarified and refined.

About a week or so before Dad died we were together in one of these reveries, when all of a sudden the cloud of unknowing parted. Dad looked up at me with those clear blue eyes that had sparkled with delight for so long and with such abundant pleasure, and said, “Hey boy!” just as he had so many countless times before. The recognition only lasted for a second, then receded back into the neurological fog. But it was more than enough.

A father gives a son one last blessing of belonging before the ship sets sail.

2006-10-31T16:39:00.000-08:00

My Daddy Is Dead

Francis Johnson
1918-2006

Francis Johnson, age 88, went to be with the Lord on Thursday, October 26, 2006, after an extended and courageous struggle with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

He was born on August 27, 1918 in the family home of his fathers at Franklin, Alabama and enjoyed this Alabama River community as an avid outdoorsman throughout his entire life. After graduating from the Monroe County High School, he worked on his family farm until July of 1941, when he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He served throughout the remainder of WWII as a Staff Sergeant in the 24th Combat Mapping Squadron in the China-Burma-India theatre of operations. Upon returning, he attended Auburn University, after which he opened and operated an agricultural supply store in Monroeville, Alabama. He married Carol Brown of Repton, Alabama in 1950. In 1956, he joined Liberty National Life Insurance Company, serving for twenty-five years until his retirement in 1981.

He was a faithful member of the First Baptist Church of Pensacola where he was active in the homebound and hospital visitation ministries.

He is survived by his wife, Carol; his four sons, Langdon of Mobile, Alabama and wife Cheri; Francis of Mobile and wife Rose; Charles of Atlanta, Georgia and wife Jana; and Dennis of Louisville, Kentucky and wife Tracy; eight grandchildren, Chad, Cliff, Will, Peter, Chris Anne, Langdon, Nathan, and Anabeth; brother Foster of Franklin, Alabama and sister Lillie VanRoy of Montgomery, Alabama.

Memorial services will be on Saturday, October 28, 10:00 a.m. in the Pleitz Chapel at the First Baptist Church of Pensacola, 500 N. Palafox Street, with the Rev. Dr. Barry Howard officiating. Graveside services will be held later that day at 3:00 p.m. in the River Ridge Cemetery of Franklin, Alabama.

Pallbearers are Glyn Brown, Rusty Corcoran, Dr. Robert Howard, Buck Laird, Ray Lynch, and Dr. Robert K. Wilson.

Memorial gifts may be sent in lieu of flowers to the Joyce Goldenberg Hospice Inpatient Residence, 10075 Hillview Road, Pensacola, Florida, 32514.

2006-10-05T10:17:00.000-07:00

My Daddy Is Dying

When I reported this to my seminary community in chapel worship on Tuesday as we shared our joys and concerns, it was as shocking for me to say as it was for our young students to hear. Death is not a category immediately accessible to creatures in full commencement of their lives.

For the first time in this years-long slow sink, Dad no longer recognizes Mom. Those clear blue eyes have now clouded. He forgets how to swallow. His brain can no longer tell his tongue to lick the trickle of drool descending down his chin. He has been sucked into a watery unwaking. Mom wonders if he will ever emerge.

Where does he go? Is there some alternative world into which he descends? Does he know others there? Is he awake in this place in a way our wakefulness cannot detect? Is he aware? Happy?

The doctors cannot say with exactitude, but my father is nearing death. Medical professionals are understandably reluctant to forecast such mysteries, but, when pressed, one finally ventured only a matter of weeks remaining.

Dad got ready to die a long time ago, long before neurological disease calcified his brain cells. Rarely have I known a person to live with greater readiness. Cavalier or wise, who's to say, but he always had a wry insoucience about what lay ahead.

I carry an early childhood movie in my head of an approaching hurricane, the neighborhood in panic, folks scurrying and scampering to protect themselves against the coming storm. In the midst of this frenzy of boarding up windows and packing up cars, my father reclines on the porch swing, gently rocking, his head laid back in calm as he draws on a cigarette. "Daddy, aren't you scared?" a wide-eyed little boy asks as he climbs up in his father's arms. "No, son. We'll be fine. Just fine," my father says, smiling, as he bends down to pick me up, his Marlboro dangling between his lips.

And, of course, we were. With him, we always were.

The National Weather Service warns us about such people, and with good reason, as recent weather events indicate. I'm not suggesting such stoicism is smart. Only interesting for a small child looking for clues about how to act in the face of fear. (No wonder my oldest brother rode out '04 Hurricane Ivan at his bayside home in Mobile, his wife Cheri having evacuated to stay with her mother in the relative safety of inland Montgomery, but Langdon stubbornly staying, declaring he would rather ride out a hurricane than spend the night with his mother-in-law!)

Now, the darkening cloud is settling in on my daddy. We know it will soon carry him away. No greatness of spirit will be able to prevent it. If he could speak, he would say those familiar words, "It will be fine, son. Just fine."

Come, cloud, carry.

2006-10-01T18:52:00.000-07:00

Communion of the Saints

Recently, Jana and I were invited back to the West Point Baptist Church, my seminary pastorate of a quarter-century ago-- how's that for dramatic time measurement?-- to help celebrate their 150th anniversary.

West Point is located in the Kentucky commmunity of Matanzas, which has yet to find its way onto any state map of Kentucky I have ever seen. It is located on the Green River (remember that old John Prine song: "Mama won't you take me back to Mulenberg County/Down by the Green River where Paradise lay?"), 5 miles west of Centertown, pop. 300, which is 9 miles west of Hartford, a town of "2000 happy people and a few soreheads," as the sign at the edge of town reports.

I became pastor the 32nd pastor of West Point in September of 1981, having passed the simplest theological examination in the history of Christendom. "Brother Charles, do you believe this book?" even-then-old Deacon Foster James asked, not accusingly like an inquisitor ready to pounce on apostasy, but gently, while cradling his well-worn, black leather-bound King James Version like a mother holding a child.

My affirmative response, however tentative it was for a beginning seminarian, must have been acceptable. I served the church for three years by weekend commute from the seminary in Louisville 120 miles northeast, traveling every weekend in a beat-up 1967 Volkswagon beetle which local farmer Rex Igleheart declared he wouldn't drive to Hartford, much less back and forth every week from Louisville.

After I completed my Masters of Divinity in 1984, I fully relocated to the rural community, ministering full-time. More than a few of my family, friends and professors thought it was a strange career move to remain at this tiny country church two more years after my seminary training. I took ribbing that among my close circle of fellow students, after graduating from the seminary with their basic divinity degree, Greg went to Harvard to pursue Ph.D. studies, Chuck to Princeton, Michael to Emory... and I to the West Point Baptist Church of Matanzas. My father, ever supportive even when he didn't quite understand the vocational strategy, would ask, "Son, are you sure the Lord knows where you are?"

Those two years proved to be intensely formative for my pastoral identity. I learned what Carlyle Marney called "the ethic of identification" with those wonderful country folk. I hauled hay and stripped tobacco and pulled a calf or two (ask a rancher to explain). Still single, I took most of my meals in the homes of the churchfolk, indeed some of the most masterful eating I have ever done.

Stories abound. We rehearsed them at the 150th. We laughed and cried and remembered. Those passed on, like Foster James, were as present that day as a witness. I swear to you I shook his wrinkled hand at that reunion. I swear it.

2006-09-22T06:47:00.000-07:00

Cliff Is Out of Iraq

Last night, Jana and I received the call we have been waiting for: Our son Cliff is out of Iraq and has returned to his base in Germany.

He has been stationed at Camp Victory in Baghdad for the better part of the past year, and is now back at the Hanau Army Airfield outside of Frankfurt. He is in the 320th Engineer Company charged with surveying the land for logistical support and construction. You may read more about his unit's return on the base's website, www.hanau.army.mil

As many of you know, Cliff is our second son to serve in Iraq. Our oldest, Chad, parashuted (I'm never sure of the past tense of that word, so let me put it the way the soldiers do: "jumped out of a perfectly good airplane!") at midnight on March 26 in 2003, right after the war started. His unit, the 173rd Airborne Infantry Division, secured the Bashur airfield near Kirkuk, and prevented the basically stable Kurds from retribution against their oppressors.

I will express my feelings about our continued involvement in Iraq in a future blog. For now, we are very proud of Cliff, inexpressibly relieved that he is out of harm's way, deeply grateful not only for the service he has rendered in Iraq, but also for his amazing maturity and growth, and earnest in our unceasing prayers that this war stop soon.

War makes a young man grow up fast. We have twice seen this sad, sobering reality.

2006-09-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

Learning and Limitation

"When I finished medical school, I thought I had learned a lot," the young cardiologist told me. "We studied hard, digested a huge body of information, really got after it."

"Upon graduation, we were let loose on the world. Ready to heal. Primed to fight human disease with our massive arsenal of medical knowledge. 'Knowledge is power,' someone has said, and we felt invincible."

"Not long into my practice, I was summoned to the hospital emergency room to attend to a man who had just had a heart attack. I rushed to the hospital feeling strong. I was going to save a life, perform a healing!"

"But, after examining my patient I realized I was not going to do anything of the sort. The man's heart had ruptured. There was absolutely nothing I could do. No sophisticated procedure mastered in a medical school clinic was worth a thin dime now. None of the hundreds of medicines I knew like my own name would work. I was helpless to heal."

"My patient was going to die. And did."

"At that moment, I learned just how much I did not know, a medical lesson not routinely taught in my school. For all my training and knowledge, that man died. His heart literally broke, and all I could do was idly watch that muscular pump quit working, as life and breath left him."

My doctor friend reminded me all over again that one of the major objectives of any enterprise of learning is the realization of how much we do not know. Any authentic course of inquiry will put the student squarely in touch with her finitude.

My Old Testament teacher in seminary would open his classes on the first day by looking over his half-glasses to survey silently the fresh faces before him, finally offering the observation, "Ladies and gentlemen, there is a God... and you are not he."

Limitation is a rude awakening for young physicians fresh out of med school, and for young seminarians ready to cut loose on the church.

As well as for a middle-age pastor whose tenure on the planet should have taught him better.

But it comes barging in to bear that rarest, most blessed virtue: humility.

With humility we are kept from indulging the pangs of omniscience that hungrily beckon us to violate our boundaries.

Without it, we suffer, like Pharisees old and new, that untold ignorance of being too sure.

2006-09-20T07:07:00.000-07:00

Prayers

It surprises even me, who has spent the better portion of his life assuring prayers to and for people in need, to note what impact of love these simple expressions deliver.

We had hardly gotten Dad settled into the Hospice residence before our family's church in Pensacola cranked into action with calls, visits, food-- indeed, fleshed-out prayers. Perhaps we tend to de-value these seemingly small caregiving gestures. We shouldn't. These reminded Mom at a tough moment, when her sons had to return to Mobile and Atlanta for their weekday responsibilities, of that most critical piece of information: you are not alone.

First thing Monday morning, I received a call from my pastor who was already marshalling forces of love on our behalf. Take it from one who has made thousands of such phone calls over the past twenty-five years: it touched me. Hearing the voice of my pastor assure not only his own prayers but also those of the church located me in instant spiritual solidarity.

Being on the receiving end of these electrical charges of love reminds you of why it's so important to keep vigil at your post on the giving end.

Hard business dealing with these end-of-life issues, no two ways around it. But, in the midst of it all there is provision at every turn. The word is from the Latin, pro-video, meaning not only to "see ahead," but also to "see for." There is One who sees ahead of us on the journey, who, according to our Leader, knows what we need before we ask. But, this One also sees for us, that is, on our behalf, in advocacy, paving the way for us.

Example? When Mom finally reached that place last week where she knew she could no longer supervise Dad's care in the home, there was a place available the next day in the Hospice residence, as if it had been waiting for him all along. One can feel the force-field of compassionate care upon entering the place. The miraculous merits of Hospice I will celebrate later.

Dad was a little more lucid yesterday, which is always a mixed blessing. On the one hand, he can commune sweetly with his lifelong companion, but on the other hand, he knows more fully and sadly that he is no longer in his own home.

Like driving through a mountain fog, things will be clear for a brief moment, then back into the haze. He must wonder: can't I linger in this lovely clearing just a little longer?

Hospice residence is designed only for temporary care. We are now searching to find a competent facility for Dad's ongoing care. There was a place available months ago, but Mom simply wasn't ready. She is the chief decision-maker; we follow her lead.

Thoughtful prayers are the best gifts these days as we do this difficult dealing. Thank you for them.

2006-09-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

That Inevitable Day

Many of you know that my father has suffered from Alzheimer's disease for years.

Recently, health care providers have added two words to this diagnosis, "end" and "stage." End-stage Alzheimer's is the clinical way of saying that Dad is dying. He has a degenerative disease for which there is no cure.

The Alzheimer's Association website explains that something called "amyloyd plaque" builds up around the outside of nerve cells in the brain, prohibiting healthy brain function. Researchers know that this material is made up of protein, but they don't know yet how it impedes normal cell activity.

Such a microscopically small thing means that my father has forgotten how to button a shirt, buckle a belt, tie a shoe. The simplest procedures of daily dress and personal hygiene have been daunting for some time now, and would long ago have been impossible to negotiate were it not for Mom's transcendent courage and patience.

But, the inevitable, long-forecast next step has finally come. Dad can no longer be cared for in his own home. We moved him to a temporary Hospice residence this weekend, and will soon place him in a residential care center.

It is hard to see this once robust man now so slumped and crumpled. No measure of stoic bravery can shield his four sons from the awful realization that dementia has robbed them of their bigger-than-life daddy.

Even Mom, who has tenderly noted every single minute graduation of this disease's progress, was not prepared to see her husband in yet this new state of reduction.

Aging ain't for sissies. Browning must have been on drugs the day he wrote that ridiculous thing, "Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be, / The last of life, for which the first was made."

I guess denial is a fine invention as long as it works. It no longer did the trick for what I saw this weekend.

2006-09-18T07:58:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Gordon!

I want to thank Gordon Atkinson for the kind words he wrote on his remarkable blog, www.reallivepreacher.com

If you have not visited that site, leave here and do so right now. Gordon has done something that is always notable for a minister: opened a window and given us a peek at the faith-- and the faith community-- before the window is dressed.

One of the motivations of faith is to act right. This, of course, is a good thing. But, it is a bad thing to cover up when we don't, which is much of the time. It is an unfortunate feature of human nature that people and churches do more of the latter than the former. So, it sure is good to have folks like Gordon who are honest and insightful enough to expose these deceits.

He is prophetic in this way, but gently and wryly so. He uses a mirror instead of a club.

We laugh, we cry, we wince, but we never yawn, which is miracle enough in anybody's preaching!

2006-09-16T04:06:00.000-07:00

A Church Home Finds Us

We make much in the "Christ-haunted" South, as Flannery O'Conner would say, of "finding a church home."

Yet another peculiar phrase of our provincial religious lingo, "finding a church home" implies that worshippers are not pilgrims but consumers. Which is it: are we on the prowl for the place that suits us best or in search of a community where we might serve?

Maybe our church home, like our biological family, finds us instead.

Shortly after we arrived in Atlanta, we couldn't help but notice the Peachtree (wouldn't you know it?) Baptist Church right down the street from our home. I knew nothing about the fellowship or the pastor or its mission or theology or affiliation.

But, the message on the marquee got our attention: "our doors and our hearts are open to everyone." Sabbath day rolled around and we headed to Peachtree to give it the "truth in advertising" test.

We were greeted warmly at the door, seated hospitably by the usher. Looking around, we saw that all kinds of folks, like us, were testing the message on the marquee too: old and young, black and white and brown, male and female.

When the worship began, the music inspired, the preaching challenged, the pastors-- both female and male-- blessed. The minister extended the invitation, and I felt my wife's elbow in my side. "Get up," she whispered. "We're joining."

"We are?" I asked, shocked, as Jana nudged me out into the aisle.

Within seconds, we were huddled at the altar praying with our new pastor and being introduced to a new fellowship of Christ.

As you might have guessed, we have discovered in the ensuing weeks nothing but delights of meaningful relationship, purposeful mission, and impactful ministry. In the midst of these glad discoveries, we will also soon see that this fellowship too, like all other bodies of Christ, has its struggles and shortcomings.

No surprise there. One need only look as far as the newest members to see that mixed bag. A seminary professor of mine used to suggest that folks dispense with their arbitrary ecclesiastical consumerism-- after all, how do I know what church is best for me?-- and simply attend the one nearest their home.

Try it. You might just be found by a church home.

2006-09-11T08:57:00.000-07:00

That Awful Day

This very hour five years ago, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Within the next 100 minutes or so, both towers fell, and our world of relative security and invincibility collapsed with them.

We watched, horrified. We huddled around televisions not only to witness, but also, together, to weep and pray.

What monstrous inhumanity would do such a thing?

Like Pearl Harbor was for my parents and grandparents, we will have that awful moment frozen in our consciousness for the rest of our lives.

Our thoughts turned instinctively to our oldest son, Chad, who had just finished basic training in the Army, and was assigned to the 173rd Airborne Infantry based in Italy. Little did we know that day that a short six months later he would parashoot at midnight into the muddy wheat fields outside Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

Indeed, our thoughts and prayers today, as every day, turn to our middle child, Cliff, who is presently serving in the Army Corps of Engineers in Baghdad. It is night there, as I write this. Duerma con los angelitos, mi estimado hijo.

Fateful in yet another way, September 11, 2001 was my final day as pastor of Second Baptist Church in Lubbock before we relocated to San Antonio to serve Trinity Baptist. As the news stories poured out of New York, I knew I would have to dispense with the prepared speech that I was to deliver to the Lubbock Rotary Club at noon. I spoke extemporaneously instead, trying to give some utterance to the confusion and shock within us.

We also cancelled a community-wide service of thansgiving scheduled for that evening, and held a service of prayer instead. We just needed to be together in solidarity, grief, and hope.
We need to do that today too.

Let us remember the persons who perished in the attack and the resulting rescue effort, their bravery and heroism.

Let us remember the young men and women who have died in Iraq and
Afghanistan-- almost 3000-- their families and loved ones.

Let us remember those wounded in these wars, almost 20,000. I'm thinking now of the young man whose purple heart ceremony I was honored to witness at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. He was gravely wounded in an attack, with severe burns over much of his body. When he spoke, though, his mind was on his buddies who didn't make it. "I just wish I could have done something for them." Where does a twentysomething year old kid get that kind of moral courage?

Let us remember what we don't want to remember: the Iraqi citizens who have died, perhaps over 40,000, many children.

Lux aeterna, luceat eis, Domine: Grant them eternal Light, O Lord.

Remembering is a powerful act. In it, someone has said, we get "re-membered:" put back together again from that which has "dis-membered" us.

You and I need that this day.

2006-09-10T07:16:00.000-07:00

A Word About…God’s Women

Forecasting trends of future Christianity is a dangerous enterprise. Who is ever to say what a Spirit as unpredictable and unmanageable as God’s is going to do next?

According to our Leader, this Wind blows where it wants to, which means that it may move in a different direction just to mess with our minds. Carlyle Marney, a maverick himself, likened that Spirit to a bucking bronco kicking the slats out of every corral we try to construct. Sooner or later a sane person might quit trying.

Therefore, please forgive the following hunch. It is based not on statistical data or empirical analysis or exhaustive research or scholarly inquiry, but, rather, on just looking around. Not an exhaustive field of observation, mind you, but just four sessions of two classes in one school of theology where I am teaching as a visiting instructor of preaching this year:

Many of the preachers in our churches will soon be women.

This will happen whether we like it or not, regardless of theology or biblical exegesis.

Over half of the students at the theology school where I teach are women. Over half of the students in the preaching class I teach are women. What this means, in terms of sheer arithmetic, is that churches will soon either have women in their pulpits or they will have no one.

These women are not overly gender-conscious concerning their call. They are not crusaders or pioneers. They are not out to make a point-- unless, that is, it’s one they are developing in a sermon.

Rather, they are submitting themselves to the call of God on their lives. Simple as that.

It would be understandable for these women to bear a chip-on-the-shoulder disposition, given the poor record of the churches in calling women to the preaching ministries. For years now, the churches have not been willing to call as preachers the very women they have sent to the seminaries to learn how to preach.

But, no rancor or self-pity here. These women just want to preach.

Some have directly criticized-- accurately, I suspect-- our more progressive churches for not having yet called a woman as senior pastor. This criticism will be short-lived. These churches will soon have no recourse but to consider women as candidates for the senior pastoral positions. The math will dictate it. There simply will be too many women for the churches to ignore.

The current situation reminds me of the old fellow who, when asked if he believed in a woman preaching in the pulpit, responded, “Believe it? Hell, I’ve seen it!”

Some disclaimers are in order. The argument I am advancing is in no way meant to devalue the considerable gifts and powers women possess for the preaching ministries of our churches. Nor, by the way, do I wish to overlook the capable, talented men God is equipping for the ministry of proclamation.

It is not my intention here to argue for an “unhindered” (as the book of Acts would put it) pastoral vocation for women, something I strongly embrace. Nor is it my intention to promote women preachers, something I firmly endorse. Nor is it my intention to advance biblical grounds for women’s church leadership, something I passionately espouse.

I do wish to say that the Holy Spirit is clearly and joyously calling women to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, that these women are responding in remarkable numbers and devotion to this call, that it is the unmistakable intention of God to fill our pulpits with women as well men, and that the Spirit has a sneaky and persistent way of seeing that God’s will is done.

These women are not going away. God will continue to claim them for the announcement of the Good News in the churches. They will keep answering that call in ever greater numbers. They will count and pay the cost of that discipleship in rigorous training. And they will keep stoking that “fire in the bones,” staying ready, as Spurgeon put it, to “light a fire in the pulpit” anywhere they are given opportunity to do so.

I give testimony and bear witness to that.

2006-08-28T07:36:00.000-07:00

An arranged life

Jana and I returned last evening from the mountains of North Carolina, where we celebrated the wedding of a young couple in, what was commonly referred to by the two families-- not entirely unironically-- as an "arranged" marriage.

Curious term. We thought such things only happened in cultures far away.

Indeed, the story of this bride and groom met is a textbook "set-up." He in New York, she in Charlotte. Her best friend is the daughter of his mom's best friend. They eventually meet under the loving calculations of these mutual friends, and are promised against their protestation that they will hit it off.

They do. They fall in love. They marry. It's an arrangement.

Aren't all our lives arranged by parties and powers outside us who know us better than we know ourselves? We are on the planet not because of any agency of our own, but because two folks conspired to make it so. Whatever the quality of their relationship, they made an arrangement for us to show up.

That we are alive today is attributed not so much to our own powers of self-preservation, but to all kinds of forces converging and collaborating for our good. Did we recruit them? Employ them? Properly pay them? Did we deserve them?

Parents, family, friends, teachers, pastors, mentors, colleagues, healers. They simply meet us, like angels, at just the right intersection, giving us the spiritual and physical provision we need to continue the journey. We don't order them up, like pizza. They appear, as if special arrangement has been made.

Join me today in a weird and wonderful imagination. Be one of those famed flowers of the field Jesus talks about. They don't toil or worry. Sunshine and soil provide them everything they need to be more beautiful than a king's palace. All they have to do is be lovely. That's the arrangement.

I reminded this bride and groom of their arranged marriage.

They reminded me of my arranged life.

2006-08-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

First day of class

It's been a long time since I experienced first-day-of-class jitters, but that familiar human feeling came back in full on Monday evening and yesterday morning as I taught my first two classes here at the McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University.

Writing a syllabus would be the first test of my new pedagogical performance. For all you who need translation (like me), a syllabus is an outline of class assignments and expectations; syllabi is its plural. At the faculty meeting last Thursday, as we shared our syllabi with each other, I was quickly reminded of just how long I had been absent from the peculiar and insular language of academia.

My collegues produced gorgeous, detailed, exhaustive documents that addressed every conceivable question students might have about what was required of them. Mine, by comparison, were pathetic. They looked emaciated next to the fleshy outlines of the other faculty members. But, my fellow teachers endured my amateurism, and patiently provided the necessary feedback for me to produce adequate syllabi.

Sandlot meets big-league.

Actually, the exercise brought to mind Jesus' instruction to his disciples to "let your yeas be yeas and your nays be nays," as the memorable King James puts it. In relationships, particularly new ones, precision in speech is important. Students need a clarity of requirements and expectations-- not fuzzy suggestions.

My old teacher, Wayne Oates, used to stress the essential relational component of "clear covenants, faithfully kept." As I told my students when distributing the syllabus, there is nothing "innerrant" about the document, and it will surely be flexibly interpreted, but the clearer map of our coming journey will make us better co-travellers.

And what impressive co-travellers these students are! They are bright, inquisitive, eager, commmitted. They are already incarnating their theological studies in real Christian service in a variety of ministry positions. Maybe the following observation is simply a function of my aging, but they seem more focused than me and my crew of seminarians 25 years ago. (I suspect my contemporaries will call that a classic case of psychological projection!)

There is a diversity of race and gender and generation among the students which greatly enriches our learning experience. African-Americans are significantly--not nominally-- represented; many are working pastors and preachers already, furthering their theological education for more effective Christian ministry. Younger students in their 20's and 30's learn alongside older students in their 40's and 50's, forming a community of mutual exploration and inquiry. Fully half of the students are women, illustrating that the Pentecostal prophecy of Peter 2000 years ago is now fulfilled before our very eyes (Acts 2.18).

They inspire. After being with them the first day of class, I am stoked.

2006-08-05T08:37:00.000-07:00

Stuff

Now, back to the "more on that later" matters of packing up, moving on, settling in...

Hauling your stuff halfway across the country is a hellish task. Even with the professional movers, who amaze in their capacity to make things fit in just the right, tight crannies, it's nothing but tedious. Jesus was right on, as usual, when he instructed us to go light.

Where does this hording instinct come from? What on earth are we ever going to do with all this stuff? Why this human tendency to collect and store and stockpile?

Storage is an industry, and not an inexpensive one. We're squirrels busily burrowing niches for stuff we will never use.

In a reversal of Thoreau's wisdom at Walden Pond, why let your matters be as one or two when thousands can provide you a weird sense of security?

I was embarrassed to discover an upstairs closet at Trinity full of files from Second B that I had not so much as glanced at over the past five years. Boxes and boxes still sealed shut from the move to San Antonio five years ago.

Why not pitch this useless material? How could I possibly ever use minutes from a monthly church business meeting back in 1989, even if it were in the realm of the remotest possibility that I would have the slightest clue where among those endless reams of paper I could ever put my hands on such a document? Not to mention the infintesimal possibility that anything interesting happened in a church business meeting...

Don't worry, fellow packrats. Those files got loaded up and trucked to Atlanta where they are now safely at rest in another closet I won't enter until it's time to pack 'em up and move 'em to the next place.

It's an addiction. Somebody start a 12 step group.

2006-08-01T04:40:00.000-07:00

Offline & Disconnected

I have been largely offline for the past three weeks as Jana and I have packed our things (more on that later), traveled across country (more on that later), started settling into our new home (more on that later), and, all the while, fulfilled preaching assignments on Sundays (yes, more on that later).

It is good now to be re-connected and back online, and I look forward to continuing this weblog conversation. We are curiously provincial and routinized creatures. Familiar persons,patterns and paths of daily activity frame our lives. These routines become second nature for us and we do them without thinking.

They give us categories by which we organize our "daily-ness." It is more than a little disorienting to be removed from this familiarity. One forgets where he placed his keys, set his coffee, put his wallet.

In such a foggy state, weird things happen. The other day in a bookstore I purchased a book that I had already obtained only two weeks before. Authors pray to the bookbuyer gods for readers like me.

The factors of travel and aging only make the situation worse. Youth adapt more readily to unfamiliarity, but as we move into the middle stretches of the journey, we cultivate a greater appreciation for the recognizable spaces of where we lay our head.

This tableau of home and hearth locates us. Maybe this is part of what Jesus was getting at when he instructed his followers to pray thanksgiving to God for the daily provisions of bread... and other regular, blessed habits of eating, sleeping, and ordering a life.

2006-07-08T13:07:00.000-07:00

A pastor without a flock

Before I began my sermon this morning (July 2) with the congregation of the University Baptist Church of Austin, I made a confession: today is the first sabbath in twenty-five years I have not been a pastor of a church, a shepherd of a flock.

Pastoral ministry is absurdly particular, familiar, and local. Simply put, a pastor raises a herd of Christians. The good pastor settles patiently into the rhythms and routines of esta familia. The routinization itself produces spiritual value in a culture seized by what someone has called "the tyranny of the new."

The sameness of the spiritual surroundings in a congregational life is what provides so much of the meaning: same pew, same preacher, same people. Same tear in the carpet at the edge of the chancel. Don't fix that! We order our spirits by that defacement at the altar of the Lord.

These congregational constants constitute a focus for our spiritual energies in worship. They help us meditate. A little boy in my Lubbock congregation would count the number of red, green and blue tiles in the stained-glass window above the chancel. I would venture that's as productive a spiritual exercise as listening to the sermon.

So, the dislocation unsettled me today until I named it out loud at the beginning of my sermon. Then, I was ok. There was an immediate unspoken but clearly conveyed message from that fine congregation that said, "We hear you, Charlie. We know what you mean. We love our home too, the familiarity of it. You are our guest. Share our routines with us today."

Same old, same old can hold spiritual power too.

2006-06-21T19:41:00.001-07:00

Virgin Voyage Into the Blogosphere

I'm not sure how to christen properly this virgin voyage into the blogosphere, except to say that I've been noodling for some time now on entering the communal discourse that a blog affords.

I am presently emerging from a complex pastoral experience that defies easy interpretation, and requires the input of my larger community to make sense.

I recently resigned the senior pastoral position at Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio, a big-steeple fellowship in the rigors of a congregational culture change at the heart of our 8th largest American city.

Five years ago, I followed a noted minister of 42 years in this pulpit, and faced all the dangers that such a transition entails. It is an axiom of church life that ministers of such lifelong tenures simply do not let go of their pastoral position and platform, and that such leadership transitions on the whole are difficult, at best.

In the technical parlance of our field, the succeeding minister in such a situation is called an "unintentional interim." There was no misunderstanding of this challenge coming in. We waded in, eyes wide open.

That alone, would have been daunting enough. But, there is more.

Trinity was an almost exclusively Anglo congregation in at the heart of a city of more than 700,000 Latinos. For years, she had been in numerical decline, as young, middle class families moved further and further out into the suburban regions of our city. Even a casual observer of the demographic context would have concluded that, in order to maintain a dynamic ministry in San Antonio, Trinity had to move from a monocultural to a multicultural constituency. That is, we had to become a family of faith that looked like God's great family at large in San Antonio: brown and black as well as white, class inclusive as well as affluent, interdenominational as well as Baptist. In short, just as all the major freeways in San Antonio converged at our church's physical location, so all the defining and difficult demographic indicators in American social life came to bear on our church's spiritual self-identity.

In the great cosmic Kitchen of the Lord, God pitched us off in the middle of big diverse metropolitan melting pot.

And then proceeded to stir the stew.

It is this concoction of vulnerability and possibility that I want to publicly digest in this space over the coming months.

I look forward to your input.

CFJ

2006-06-21T19:41:00.000-07:00

About Charles Foster Johnson

Charlie Johnson is a pastor on sabbatical, currently teaching at the McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia.

His pastorate took him through a number of small churches in Kentucky and Mississippi, several worldwide mission tours, and thirteen years at Second Baptist Church in Lubbock, Texas. Most recently, Charlie was pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio, Texas from 2001 - 2006.

Hailing from a small city in south Alabama, Johnson was greatly influenced by racial and social justice issues brought to focus by the 60’s civil rights demonstrations. Inspired to take an active role in these issues he planned to become a lawyer, but was called to the ministry in the summer of 1977 in a Washington D.C. ghetto.

While in college that summer, Johnson traveled to the nation’s capital and was walking through a housing project. While interacting with children on the street, he saw inspiring love in the eyes of these young people living in abject poverty.

“In the midst of such hopelessness just a few blocks from our nation’s Capitol, those children’s faces bore the likeness of God!” Johnson remembers. “Their sterling capacities for love inspired me beyond description. I knew beyond doubt that the transmission of sublime love I received from these children would comprise my life’s work.”

Johnson regularly invites rabbis, priests, and ministers from all religions to lead services at the churches he pastors, and accepts invitations to reciprocate. The importance of these initiatives were never more apparent than in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, when he joined ministers of all faiths to publicly urged the community to resist demonizing Muslims.

Commenting on his approach to the ministry, Johnson states that, “Christians have a sacred responsibility to build bridges of understanding with other religious and ethnic groups. The only people Jesus condemned were those who condemned others.”

Johnson is a regular critic of the politics of exclusion being used by the Southern Baptist Convention to stifle freedom of thought in Baptist seminaries, and the denial of women’s roles in church leadership.

Rev. Johnson holds the traditional Baptist positions of separation of church and state, but does not believe that ministers should avoid public service. He readily accepts leadership roles in the community, and served on the San Antonio Mayor’s Commission on Integrity and Trust in City Government, at the request of Mayor Ed Garza.

Charlie is married to Jana Powers McCormick. They have three children. Chad (28) is married to Mary Beth Lancaster of Oklahoma and is managing a ranch in Honey Grove, TX. Cliff (26) is serving in the Army Corps of Engineers in Baghdad, Iraq. Chris Anne (22) is a veterinary assistant in San Antonio.

In addition to a voracious reading appetite, Charlie enjoys hunting, barbecuing, or puttering around the family ranch in his 1989 Ford pickup.