France?

On Monday afternoon, if everything goes according to plan, my wife Christy, my daughter Catherine, and I will head to France for three weeks.

“France?” You say. “Why France?”

I think it started when I was fifteen years old, in my first French class. I opened my grammar and there were these two boys, Guy and Michel, greeting each other in French.

“Bonjour, Guy!” (Hello, Guy!).
“Bonjour, Michel” (Hello, Michel).
“Ca va?” (How’s it going?).
“Ca va bien, et toi?” (It’s going well, and you?).
“Pas mal” (Not bad).

I was suddenly able to picture this whole other world, where people spoke a different language and ate different foods and did different things than I had done when my brothers and I were growing up in West Virginia (“Tu veux jouer au football?”). I was smitten. I wanted to go there, live there, and learn how to greet my friends as casually as Guy and Michel did.

“Bonjour! Ca va?”

In my thirties I took my first trip to the Holy Land, my first real international trip of any kind. I remember standing to stretch at one point on that long flight, looking out the window at the green countryside below, and asking the flight attendant where it was. “France,” she said, and I wanted to open the emergency exit and jump out.

And then in my forties, on a mission trip to Russia, I had a 24-hour layover in Paris. It was my first time in that city. Robert Cochran was with me, the Director of Missions for the DC Baptist Convention, and at one point he and I were sitting on the upper deck of one of those wide, flat-bottomed boats that ply the Seine. It was after dark. We came around a bend in the river and saw the full moon rising above the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I said, “Robert, it’s a good thing you are not a good-looking girl (and he wasn’t), because this is so romantic I would be tempted to kiss you right on the mouth!”

My daughter Catherine seems to have inherited my infatuation with France. She studied French in high school and college, and last fall, before the first of two fairly extensive brain surgeries, she began to show me what she had found on a site called “Cheap Houses in France.” I said, “Maybe we don’t need to move to France, but if you find a good place we might be able to visit for a few weeks after your second surgery.” And she did. She found a house in a tiny hilltop village in the South of France that rented for three weeks for about the same price we would pay for a single week at Virginia Beach. And I found airfare from Washington to Paris that was cheaper than my last domestic flight.

And that’s why we’re going to France.

I couldn’t do it if I didn’t have great help at home. Senior Associate Pastor Lynn Turner (and lifelong woman in ministry) will be preaching on Sunday, July 7; Steve Blanchard, aspiring novelist and the director of our most visible ministry—Compassion—will preach on July 14; and rising star Allison Collier, Associate Pastor for Christian Formation, will preach on July 21. I hope you will give them your full support and reassure the congregation that a church that has been here for 244 years can probably get along for a few weeks without its Senior Pastor.

A bientot!

Staff Retreat

I’ve just returned from a three-day staff retreat at Eagle Eyrie Baptist Conference Center near Lynchburg and this is what I’m feeling most:

Gratitude.

The members and friends of Richmond’s First Baptist Church know what an outstanding staff we have, and I do, too, but spending three days with these people, watching them not only work together but also play together, took my appreciation to a whole new level. I won’t go into detail, but Beth Davis’ presentation of our new communication strategy was impressive, Phil Mitchell’s carefully crafted worship experience was powerful, Amanda Lott’s mastery of the “Fishbowl” game was mind-blowing, Donna Earley’s rendition of “Muskrat Love” was sensational, and Steve Blanchard’s willingness to drive the bus home even with a splitting headache was typically selfless.

When I started the closing session on Wednesday morning I said, “Let’s pause for a moment of gratitude. When you think of our church, what are you grateful for?” The staff spent the next five minutes sharing their list and then I shared my own. I said, “I’m grateful that our mission is clear, our finances are strong, our attendance is up, our building is beautiful, our location is perfect, and our staff is world class.” And then I elaborated on that last one.

I said, “When I look around this room I don’t see one person who is a problem, not one person who needs to be replaced.” In his book Good to Great leadership guru Jim Collins says that one of the most important things in any organization is having “the right people on the bus.” Once they’re on the bus, he says, you can figure out where they need to sit, but the important thing is getting them on there in the first place. I told the staff that I think we have the right people on the bus, and not only that, I think they’re in the right seats.

After we got home (on the bus) I put on a suit to attend the inauguration of Jacqueline Lapsley, the new President of Union Presbyterian Seminary. While waiting to process with the rest of the trustees Jim Wagner, a former president of Emory University in Atlanta, asked me what I’d been up to and I told him I was just getting home from a three-day staff retreat. “How was that?” he asked, like someone who knew how badly these things can go. And I was able to tell him, honestly, “I feel like I have the staff I’ve been working toward my whole life” And if you can say that after a staff retreat, you know it was a good one.

Here’s hoping we’ve all come back to First Baptist rested, refreshed, and ready to re-engage our mission. During that session on Wednesday I articulated it for the staff like this: “By the grace of God, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, we labor alongside the Lord Jesus in the joyful work of bringing Heaven to Earth.” And when you have a great staff,

It’s joyful work indeed.

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From left to right above: Ruth Szucs, Jim Somerville, Allison Collier, Michael Lacy, Lynn Turner, Amanda Lott, Donna Earley, Chris Wondree, Matthew Hensley, Phil Mitchell, Beth Davis, Steve Blanchard, and Allen Cumbia. Not pictured: Robert Thompson and Emma Tilley.

Leaving the SBC

In my last post I mentioned that I missed a special, called deacons’ meeting at First Baptist Church last Tuesday night because I was at a seminary trustee meeting in Charlotte. I also mentioned that someone made a motion at that meeting to sever any remaining ties with the SBC and the motion carried without opposition. 

Let me say more about that.

This is an emotional decision for many in the church, some because the Southern Baptist Convention has been their denominational “home” all their lives and they can’t imagine leaving, but others because the SBC is disrespecting our female clergy, telling them they can’t be pastors when we know that they can. At that same deacons’ meeting the Reverend Doctor Allison Collier, our Associate Pastor for Christian Formation, stood up and said, essentially, “If you say you love us inside the building then it would be nice to say you love us outside and take a stand before the SBC.” I wasn’t in the room, but I can imagine the impact of such an emotional appeal. Immediately afterward one of our deacons stood to make the motion mentioned above and the motion carried, as I said, without opposition.

But we’re Baptists. The deacons don’t get to make such decisions on their own. Only the congregation can do that. So the deacons are making a recommendation to the congregation that we sever any remaining ties with the SBC (mostly financial at this point) and on Sunday, May 19, during the Sunday school hour, we are going to gather for discussion and possibly a vote, but I believe that for us, as well as for the SBC, the outcome has already been determined.

How do I feel about that? Feel is probably the right word. As I said, this is an emotional decision. There are retired SBC missionaries in our church whom I love very much, and others who have known no other denominational home. I know this is going to be painful for them. I wish it didn’t have to be that way. At the same time I love our female pastors and have been supportive of women in ministry from the very beginning. My last SBC meeting was in New Orleans in 1990, where my five-year-old niece wore a button that said, “If you won’t ordain me, don’t baptize me.”

Which reminds me of something else Allison Collier said.

In a text message she sent to me yesterday she said, “My call to be a Christian was not limited by my gender, my ability to sit at the table for communion is not limited by my gender, my ability to tell others about the love of Jesus on the mission field is not limited by my gender, therefore proclaiming the love of God from anywhere shouldn’t be limited by my gender…that’s not Christlike!”

So, we’re not going to let the SBC tell us that Allison can’t be a pastor, or that she can’t preach from the pulpit (have you heard her preach?). We’re not going to let them say such things to Lynn Turner or Amanda Lott or Ruth Szucs or Becky Payne or any of the many women we have ordained since 1998. And let’s be truthful: we haven’t been “An SBC church” in a long time. We haven’t sent messengers to the annual convention in more than thirty years. But leaving the SBC will be a final farewell for some of us in a way that will be painful. I don’t want to be cavalier about that. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to a denomination that welcomed me as a former Presbyterian and paid for my seminary education–all seven years. I want to appreciate all those things that made the SBC great before the fundamentalist takeover brought us to this fork in the road. But that’s where we are, and we have to make a choice. I believe we will choose to leave the SBC, and for some of us, that will be painful. I’m sorry about that.

But I also believe it’s what we need to do.