Biographical note: Foy Valentine
was pastor of the First Baptist church
of Gonzales, Texas, before becoming
Christian Life Commission director,
first for Texas Baptists and then for
Southern Baptists, for 35 years before
retiring in 1988. A native Texan, he is a
graduate of Baylor University and holds
the Doctor of Theology degree from
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
as well as honorary doctorates
from William Jewell College, Louisiana
College, and Baylor. He has been given
Distinguished Alumnus awards by both
Baylor and Southwestern Seminary, has
just completed four years of service as
President of Americans United for Separation
of Church and State, and has
preached , lectured, and taught Christian
ethics among Baptists around the
world for decades. He has also written
many articles and eight books. Valentine,
70, lives in Dallas and spends his
summers in Red River, New Mexico. He
and his wife, Mary Louise, have three
daughters and five grandchildren.
My Dear Baptist brothers and sisters
in Christ:
You have been duly elected by your
church to serve on the Pastor Search
Committee. It is the most important
committee assignment that a Baptist
church can make. You may be already
heavily and sacrificially involved in this
challenging responsibility.
Out of well over 50 years in the gospel
ministry and out of a very special
love for Baptists, I make bold to write you this letter.
“See ye to it,” was Pilate’s word to
the religious establishment dead set
on crucifying Jesus. He washed his
hands of the whole unpleasant mess.
That hand washing has been a quintessential
sin that preachers have railed against since the mind of Baptists “runneth not to the contrary.” That
hand washing, the sermonizers thundered
was pusillanimous pussy footing,
feckless fence straddling, contemptible
compromise, craven cowardice.
Now, along comes 1994. And now
along come today’s pastor search committees.
And now along come sincere
and solid church members by the
droves earnestly insisting, cautiously
counseling, “Find us a pastor who has
never taken sides in this SBC fight.
Don’t bring a preacher in here all grimy
with the dust and heat of all those
battles.”
These good and sincere church
members strongly feel that the bitter
divisiveness that has characterized
most annual Baptist conventions in
recent years can be kept out of the
local church if only the Search Committee
will shun like the plague anybody
who has been involved in the denominational
conflict.
Think about it.
The Southern Baptist Convention we
once knew and supported no longer
exists; and after 15 years of intense
politicization, there is hardly a Baptist
preacher in the whole land who is not
on one side or the other and who does
not know full well which side he is on.
Preachers who really would like to
be considered by your church after
you have felt led to be in touch with
them will generally be reluctant to declare
their affiliation lest by doing so
they cut themselves off from consideration
by your Committee. Make no mistake
about it, however; you can easily,
and under God you should, if you are to
avoid a potential catastrophe for your
church, determine where the brother
really stands, which side of the controversy
he is really on.
Fundamentalists will nearly always
deny any political inclinations or affiliations
with the Fundamentalist establishment
now controlling the Convention.
You must therefore make your
own assessment as to whether or not
they are being candid, telling the truth.
(continued)
That determination can easily be
made (1) on the basis of who has recommended
the prospect to you, for if a
Fundamentalist has recommended him,
there can be little doubt that this prospect
is himself a Fundamentalist who
would be beholden to the Fundamentalist
kingpins and who would without
hesitation or delay seek to lead your
church into active involvement in the
Fundamentalist political agenda; (2) on
the basis of visiting preachers they
have recently brought into the
churches where they are now serving;
and (3) on the basis of whether or not they have purchased themselves a bogus “doctor’s degree” from one of the
mail order degree mills hotly patronized
by the Fundamentalists.
Non-Fundamentalists will generally
be frank and open with you about where
their loyalties are. They can be easily
identified by their response to questions
put to them about their current
involvement in the life and work of the
SBC. If they are in reasonably strong
churches and are not so involved, they
are almost certainly not Fundamentalists.
If they are in smaller churches,
they will not usually mind sharing candidly
with you how they have faced
recent elections and issues in annual
Baptist conventions.
If your church is particularly strong,look for at least one of the Fundamentalist
bigwigs to have a “marvelous revelation
from the Lord while praying
just this morning” about who should
be your pastor and will piously share
this “vision” which God has allegedly
given him for you. They do this directly
and indirectly; and they will continue
to “ be in touch” with you in a persistent,
tenacious effort to place one of
their own functionaries in your church.
If yours is an especially strategic
church, it is virtually certain that the
Fundamentalist “rulers” already know
more about what your Search Committee
is doing than do your church deacons
and staff members put together. If
your church is small, the same kind of
lobbying will be done by lesser lights
from the Fundamentalist camp.
Now, here is the most important meat in this whole coconut.
If a pastor prospect definitely affirms
his absolute neutrality regarding
the division in the Southern Baptist
Convention, you can be fairly sure of
one out of three things: either
(1) he lacks perception and
insight as to what has been
going on right under his nose
in Baptist life, or
(2) he knows what is going on but
just does not care or lacks the
courage and integrity to stand
for his convictions if he does
care, or
(3) he is not being honest with
you.
(continued)
(1) If he lacks perception and insight,
it is likely that he has simply
opted for a blindered approach to an
extremely important issue in our organized
Baptist life; and, whether he is
younger or older, he has, like Pilate,
sought to evade responsibility, leaving
to others the decisions affecting our
corporate Baptist life and cooperative
mission endeavors. Do you want a pastor
characterized by evasiveness and a
self-inflicted amnesia?
(2) If your declared neutralist knows
and cares about what has been going
on but has lacked the courage and
integrity to positionize himself, then it
is clear that this prospect has rejected,
or severed, the ties that bind Baptists
together to do together in God’s world
the Lord’s work which we could not do
separately; and in the process, he has
become an accomplice in a monumentally
wicked thing. Do you want a pastor
characterized by cowardice and
lack of integrity?
(3) If the declared neutralist is not
being honest with you, he is not telling
you the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth because he knows
how very concerned Baptist pastor
search committees can be about any
controversy or anyone related in any
way to controversy; and he hopes that
you will recommend him to your congregation
partly because, he would
have you believe, he “would never bring
any of this divisiveness before your
fine people.” I could take you to a dozen
such churches and pastors today. The
pastor search committees in those
churches once upon a time believed
those prospects when they declared
or clearly implied their neutrality; but
once they got called and on the church
field, they hit the ground running with
the Fundamentalist political agenda.
Do you want a pastor who does not tell
the truth?
The greatest hazard now facing many
Baptist churches seeking a pastor is
not so much that they will call a Fundamentalist
pastor but that they will call
a Smooth Operator with no nerve, no
Holy Spirit-given courage, no intestinal
fortitude, no authentic Baptist “fire in
his belly,” no real moral energy. Your
Committee has the high and holy task
of delivering your church from such a
fate.
May God lead you and
may God bless you.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Foy Valentine
