Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
Twenty years ago, I walked into a bookstore and I was drawn to a book titled, Too Great a Temptation: The Seductive Power of America’s Super Church, by Joel Gregory. It was a little odd because it was totally outside of my church world. It was about the Baptist world, but I felt there was something in it for me.
The author was one of the rising stars in the Baptist church in the ’80s and ’90s. He rose to what was then the pinnacle of the Baptist world to pastor the 30,000 strong, First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, and succeed the great Baptist leader, W.A. Criswell.
However, two years later, he resigned, his marriage failed and he wound up selling cemetery plots to make a living. The book was not about moral failure, but about the inner workings of what he termed a super church.
About the only thought, I came away with was that I was happy to not be part of a so-called, “super church”. It took 20 years, but God had a reason for me reading the book.
Recently, I ran across an article in the Baptist Standard about the author. It is an incredible story of redemption. He is now a respected preaching professor at Baylor. But what is really awesome is the role the black church played in his redemption. Here is some of the story.
“While Gregory was pastor at First Baptist in glitzy downtown Dallas, he met the late E.K. Bailey, legendary pastor of Concord Missionary Baptist Church, a black church in gritty South Dallas…And in Bailey, Gregory found a true friend.
“When I left the church and moved into a tiny apartment in Fort Worth, the one person who kept calling me was E.K.,” Gregory recalled, smiling at the poignancy of Bailey’s persistence. “‘Gregory, you should preach,’ he’d say. It was crazy.”
Or maybe inspired. In 1997, Bailey invited Gregory to speak at the E.K. Bailey International Preaching Conference. “I didn’t know what it was,” Gregory recalls. “I thought it was a seminar for preachers.” Instead, he walked into a ballroom at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Dallas to an audience of 900 ministers, primarily African-American pastors.
“I spoke on 2 Corinthians 4:6, ‘We have this treasure in earthen vessels.’ It was a life-defining moment.” The Apostle Paul’s treatise on brokenness and hope tracked Gregory’s sojourn, and his sermon took a biblical-yet-confessional tone.
What happened next mirrored Gregory’s ascension as a bright-light young preacher in the Southern Baptist Church. “The brothers and sisters started asking me to come preach,” he said. “I was clueless this would happen. I started preaching in black churches all over the country.”
That happened because African-American churches resonated with the broken-yet-redeemed Gregory, explained Ralph West, pastor of The Church Without Walls in Houston.
“One of the African-American church’s strong points is its ability to give people second chances. Very few pastors who stand up and preach in any African-American church would disagree with that,” said West.
“The black church identifies with broken people,” he added. “It is a church of redemption, a place of forgiveness. It gives the marginalized a place to find their opportunity.”
Friends, that is straight from the Father’s heart. While I was in England, I saw the Father come to us as a black person. He was serving us some of His finest food and drink.
The vision became a reality when the relatives of the nine people murdered at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., told the accused killer they forgive him.
“We already forgive him for what he’s done, there’s nothing but love from our side of the family.” Chris Singleton, whose mother was one of the victims of the A.M.E. murders.
America desperately needs the black church.
Love is the only way we will see God turn what was meant for evil in our nation’s racial history, and the recent tragedies in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Charleston for our nation’s good and God’s glory.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” Martin Luther King Jr.
Many Blessings, BW