Texas Baptists Committed - A Rancher's Rumblings, April 1, 2008

Last week, baseball’s 2008 season began in Japan. However, as I write this, it is Opening Day in America, and – unfortunately – the Rangers are losing. It was easier when Mickey Mantle was playing and I was a Yankees fan. As a child, I thought it was normal for my favorite team to win the World Series every year. I still love baseball and am especially mindful of it today, March 31, 2008.

On March 31, 1908, twins David Floy and Joe Roy Currie were born in Paint Rock (or maybe it was on the ranch). Roy, my Daddy, would be 100 years old today if he were still alive (he died in 1989), and he certainly would be watching baseball. I miss watching games with him and hearing Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese announce those games.

We had a great trip together to Spring Training in 1979, and I have a picture of Daddy with Al Kaline, the Hall of Fame Detroit Tigers outfielder. Kaline, who was retired by then, was one of the players he loved. Somewhere, I also have a picture of me with Bill “Spaceman” Lee.

In early March this year, Loretta and I went to Tucson to catch a few Spring Training games. While watching the Rockies and Angels, I missed my Dad while having a great time visiting with an older gentleman sitting one row behind me. He asked whether I knew much about baseball, and I told him my Dad had raised me on baseball. So he asked whether I could name the 16 teams in the 1950s before expansion.

I took him up on the challenge. He mentioned that several cities had more than one team. I replied, “you mean the St. Louis Cardinals and the St. Louis Browns; the Philadelphia Athletics and the Philadelphia Phillies; the Boston Red Sox and the Boston Braves; the New York Yankees and Giants, along with the Brooklyn Dodgers.” I kept going until I named them all.

Well, he spent the next hour quizzing me, and I must say it was as much fun as I have had in years. I just kept remembering so many things about baseball that I learned from my Dad and Uncle Floy. Uncle Floy and Daddy subscribed to a magazine called Baseball Digest, and Uncle Floy would put a check mark next to each article when he finished it. I think that reading those magazines with them taught me a lot of baseball history.

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History has always fascinated me, and I love reading and studying history. I learned Baptist history while growing up in Training Union. Now if you’re under the age of 40 – or you didn’t grow up in Baptist churches – you’ve probably never heard of Training Union. So I’ll explain it like this – Training Union was sort of like Sunday School at night. However, where Sunday School mostly covers Bible basics, Training Union mostly covered Baptist basics. It’s my conviction that Baptists have paid a dear price for doing away with Training Union.

Today, our churches are full of people who are Baptists in name only – they are not “convictional Baptists.” They don’t even know what it means to be a Baptist, but they attend a Baptist church because they live close by or they like the preacher or their friends go there. They could just as easily go to a “Bible church” or a church of another denomination if the preacher they liked moved away or their close friends changed churches.

Oh, I’m glad they are attending a Baptist church, but we need Baptists who are Baptist out of conviction rather than convenience. I believe it is critical to our future as Texas Baptists that we have a “convictional Baptist education” program in every church, along with a “convictional Baptist education” program in every university and Baptist Student Ministry in our state.

Furthermore, I believe that every pastor should preach at least one sermon per year regarding “What it means to be a Baptist,” and tell the story of Baptist history – from the Anabaptists through Roger Williams on to John Leland to E. Y. Mullins and George W. Truett, and concluding with a clear explanation of what has happened in Baptist life these past 30 years. Our people need to know our history and why our Baptist principles are so fundamental to spreading the Gospel in a free-church tradition.

I would love to see home study groups that focus on Baptist principles as well as Bible study. I would love to see retreats – focusing on Baptist principles – for youth, college students, and young couples. We have a fascinating Baptist history; our freedom as Baptists was bought for a heavy price paid by many.

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Although some refuse to believe it, Texas Baptists Committed has always been more about Baptist principles and education than politics. Our focus and ministry has been about preserving Baptist freedom for all – and not on controlling Baptist agencies and ministries. There is a difference between protecting and controlling. We have worked to protect our institutions and ministries by recommending leadership publicly committed to protecting our freedom. I am proud of what we have done to preserve the Baptist witness in America and to help produce more and more convictional Baptists.

At TBC, we are focusing our future on how to be more helpful to local churches and individuals in producing convictional Baptists. In the coming months, we will be enhancing our Web site to provide more resources to help in this effort. We also plan to travel and speak more on the importance of being convictional Baptists.

Being a Baptist saves no one; being a Baptist is not as important as being a Christian. However, being a Baptist is something that we should thoroughly understand . . . something in which we should take pride, for we have a significant role to play in the Kingdom of God as free Baptists.

I am thankful that my parents taught me what it means to be a Baptist. I am thankful that I went to a Texas Baptist university. I am thankful that I belong to a church that freely relates to an open and inclusive state Baptist convention. Finally, I am thankful that Mother turned 91 last week and that I still have her here with me to love – not just in memory.

Faithful Baptist parents . . . a strong local church, with Training Union every Sunday night . . . and a university rooted in the Texas Baptist way . . . all of these helped produce a convictional Baptist. Being just a casual baseball fan was never good enough for me, and neither is being just a casual Baptist. I invite you to work with us at TBC to help more casual Baptists become convictional Baptists.