Eustace came to mind as Pansy and I attended the 2013 General Assembly of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) in Greensboro, North Carolina.
A few years ago, our church notified us that Eustace was our “family minister,” under a plan in which deacons and other designated lay members are supposed to keep track of crises or special events in the lives of assigned families.
Eustace (which, of course, was not his real name) came up to me at church soon after we received the notice and said, in effect, “You being a minister, you won’t have any problems. So I won’t bother you and your wife.” Eustace was a man of his word. Thereafter, when he saw us across the sanctuary, he would wave at us and give a big grin. I could picture him taking out his notebook and putting a check by our names: “I’ve done my duty by the Webbs.”
The idea that ministers and their wives have no spiritual needs flashed through my mind at the CBF meeting as continual inspiration flowed like an IV, filling the veins of my spirit and healing wounds of my heart.
Music touches the depths of my spirit. So I hungrily absorbed the sounds of a mellow saxophone with “Jesus Loves Me,” a song adults need to hear along with children. A full orchestra’s “It Is Well with My Soul” reminded me to check my spiritual vital signs to see if all really is well. A kilted bagpiper’s traditional “Amazing Grace” made me once more claim the “grace that is greater than all my sin.” The piper played first as he marched steadily down the center aisle of the huge auditorium and then as he accompanied a massed youthful choir. The instrumental pieces were so familiar that I “sang in the Spirit” as they were played.
I joined in hearty congregational singing of the sort I scarcely remember hearing since long-ago seminary chapel when robust voices were raised to the glory of the One to whom we were seeking to dedicate our lives in church careers.
Newly commissioned chaplains, church starters, and counselors stood on the stage, some giving testimony in larger than life video amplification. Their fresh commitment to serve “the least of the least” of Christ’s brethren and sisters caused me to ask myself, “How am I fulfilling the dedication I made to the Lord sixtysome years ago? How am I letting God use me? What more could I do? How can my wife and I best use some of our financial resources to strengthen their work and the broader ministry of CBF?”
After the commissioning, the new CBF ministers moved to locations around the auditorium, and we were invited to form small clusters around each minister. The inner circle right around each new worker put their hands on his or her shoulders. Those of us on the outer rings put our hands on the shoulders of those in front of us. By extension, then, all of us in a cluster were physically and spiritually connected as a prayer of dedication was offered.
Wendell Griffen, a tall salt-and-pepper-haired African-American bi-vocational pastor from Little Rock, began his Thursday night capstone message with a line from Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi’s movie, The Blues Brothers. In the movie which I have not seen but now want to see, one of these unsavory, foul-mouthed characters declares, "I'm on a mission from God." Griffen offered a disclaimer for the language and behavior of the Brothers, but he used that declaration as his launchpad for challenging us CBFers to be on a mission from God.
Bill Leonard, church history professor at Wake Forest Divinity School, challenged us Baptists to put a clearer, affirming focus on baptism, the rite which gave us our name. It’s been a while since I baptized anyone, but Leonard’s breakout session made me realize I had made little effort to help children or adults understand the testimonial significance of what they were undertaking or to remind viewers in the congregation of their own symbolic burial to sin and resurrection to a new kind of life.
Another foundational concern for Baptists throughout our four-century history came into focus in the session led by Brent Walker and his fellow staffers of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. Our look at current thorny issues of church-state separation made me wonder what more I can do in our church and in other contexts to protect this vital principle which led to the very formation of our denomination. Our Baptist forbears promulgated this among our nation’s founding fathers and influenced the inclusion of this principle in the first sixteen words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Brett Younger appropriately had us laughing -- often self-consciously -- in a workshop on use of humor in the pulpit. The professor of homiletics (“preaching,” in everyday language) from Mercer’s McAfee School of Theology, made me start to reassess my whole approach to preaching, not just the question of how or whether to try to make the congregation laugh. Younger’s bottom line: make sermons interesting, not necessarily make them funny. I thought of a note a guest preacher found on the pulpit: “What are you trying to do to these people?”
A tiny Texan named Suzii Paynter stood seven feet tall in her closing challenge as the new coordinator of the national CBF. She laid out her vision and challenge which I hope and pray will mark a truly new day for CBF. We're still young as an organization and have a good foundation, but if she gets to the various state CBFs and other local meetings, she can go a long way toward energizing our statistically small body. Her challenge includes new church starts, outreach to diverse populations, and inclusion of more women as ministers.
We had several other uplifting experiences on the CBF trip that were not part of the programmed events:
En route to Greensboro, we stopped over in nearby High Point, North Carolina, to visit one of my former journalism students and his family. Nathan did the layout and design for my two Christmas books. He and his wife Christy have three handsome, healthy boys: ages 10, 8, and 5. They also have a dear little girl, age 4, who suffers from spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), which Nathan and I both have likened to a childhood version of Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS). Our heartache at seeing her continual deterioration is mitigated by seeing the loving care her parents and brothers give. Nathan and Christy are determined to help her have a good life for whatever time that life may last.
We were delighted to see the maturity and Christian commitment of a Greensboro couple whose lives had intersected with ours when they were much younger. Gayle and Richard were grade schoolers in my first church after seminary. A few years later, just after we married, Pansy taught Gayle in ninth grade English. Gayle is now a retired teacher herself, and Richard is a semi-retired business-related professional. We enjoyed fellowship with them in the evening worship hours and over dinner in a little Greek restaurant they frequent.
A strong initial appeal for going to the CBF meeting was the prospect of fellowship with representatives from the seminary at my college alma mater, Hardin-Simmons University (HSU). My appreciation for how HSU professors and staff helped me grow up is so strong that I wrote a book, Hardin-Simmons, Hail to Thee. That title, by the way, is the first five words of our HSU anthem. I was able to spend time at the seminary booth in the exhibit hall, and Pansy and I were guests of the seminary at the Baptist Joint Committee luncheon. All this led to reflections on opportunities Hardin-Simmons provided for overcoming some of my youthful flaws during four eventful years on campus.
I also enjoyed many mini-reunions in hallway conversations with fellow ministers, some of whom I hadn’t seen in decades. I’m trying to keep those contacts alive through the blessing of the Internet and e-mail.
The CBF assembly closed with a Communion service. This was no passive event. We had to get up from our chairs and go to servers who were stationed throughout the auditorium. The very act of getting up and moving caused me to think even more seriously than usual about my sin and Jesus's sacrificial death to forgive and remove those sins which is depicted in this rite.
So, old Eustace was more than a little off base. And I didn’t try to explain to him that we ministers have spiritual weaknesses and that we face temptations day by day and often fall to them, much the same as he and other lay people do.
The entire CBF trip -- en route and in the hallway, in addition to the structured sessions -- provided occasion for introspection and retrospection, for spiritual renewal.
Years ago, I heard about an old cowboy who spent weeks or months out on the range, virtually alone with his cattle. About his only sustained contact with other live humans was at the annual camp meeting where he absorbed all he could of the gospel messages. Then, he fed on that inspiration for months to come as he went back to his cows. I pray that I can feed for months to come on the inspiration of those brief days in Greensboro.
