Click for AUDIO; Click for PART 8, 2006-2017: Texas Baptists Committed
Link in this post: July 4, 2004: George Mason sermon, “The Cross and the Flag
2004: Joanna and I find Wilshire – thanks be to God!
In the fall of 2001, I had attended my first Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) annual meeting. It was in Dallas that year, and my sister’s husband, Palmer McCown, newly retired after serving over 20 years as Baptist Student Minister at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, came to town for the meeting and stayed with us. I was between jobs at the time, having been laid off of my latest stint as a technical writer and editor earlier that year. So I went to the meeting with Palmer.
As we walked through the exhibit area, we never could get more than five or ten steps before Palmer would either stop, or be stopped by, a friend and/or colleague, to chat. He introduced me to quite a few members of the BGCT staff at that gathering. I don’t recall specifically, but I’m figuring that this was where Palmer introduced me to his friend, Phil Strickland, director of the BGCT’s Christian Life Commission (CLC).
In 2002 and 2003, I attended on my own as a member of the BGCT executive board and made it a point each time to stop by the CLC booth and chat with Phil and his associate director, Suzii Paynter. I knew Suzii from my numerous visits to First Baptist Church, Austin, while visiting Daddy, who was a member there. Suzii’s husband, Roger, was pastor of FBC Austin, and I had come to know both of them as treasured friends.
My visits to the CLC booth were therapy for me. I shared with Phil and Suzii my latest frustrations with my church in Plano, and they sympathized with me and encouraged me.
In 2004, Joanna and I had decided we would leave our church in Plano after my ensemble’s final performance in June before our annual summer break. We no longer had the kids as an excuse. Alison would be graduating from college, living on her own, and starting work as a 1st-grade teacher in the Plano Independent School District. Travis would be graduating from high school and, in the fall, starting college at Texas State University in San Marcos.
In May, I drove to San Antonio for Phil’s annual CLC Conference at Trinity Baptist Church. George Mason, senior pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, was one of Phil’s three keynote speakers at the conference. When I heard George speak for the first time, I was awestruck. I had no idea there was such a pastor in the Dallas area. I leaned over to my friend, Dan Williams, and whispered, “Is he always this good?” Dan nodded.
During a break, I was talking to David Currie when George came over, stuck out his hand, and said, “Hi, I’m George.” That was how I met George Mason for the first time. Later that day, after hearing George speak some more, I sought him out during a break, told him that my wife and I lived in Plano, that we were preparing to leave our church in Plano, which had been heading in the direction of fundamentalism, and would soon be seeking a new home church. George said, “Well, we’re right down the road from you.”
During my college years at OBU in the early 1970s, I had undergone a severe faith crisis. In fact, I had for a time completely stopped believing in God, but I kept searching. A friend in Brotherhood Dorm suggested I go speak to Jerry Barnes, pastor of University Baptist Church, across the street from the campus. Jerry Barnes ultimately became a dear friend; more than that, I consider him second only to Daddy in helping me find my way back to Jesus. His preaching challenged me to grapple with scripture to find a deeper meaning, in a way that no pastor ever had. His preaching dug into the guts of Jesus’s gospel, a gospel of justice for the marginalized, the forgotten, the despised.
Back in my hotel room following the last session of the day, I called Joanna, who had stayed home in Plano. I told her that I had been searching for another Jerry Barnes for 25 years, and “I think I may have finally found him in this George Mason. Babe, we’re going to have to visit Wilshire.”
On July 4, 2004, we visited Wilshire Baptist Church. On our way there, Joanna said, “I’m not sure I want to drive a half-hour to church every week.” Then we heard George Mason, on July 4, preach a sermon entitled “The Cross and the Flag,” in which he put Baptist patriotism in an entirely different perspective than we had seen at the church in Plano. The focus, on this most patriotic of holidays, was where it was at Wilshire every Sunday – on Jesus, not country. We hadn’t even reached our car when Joanna exclaimed, “I want to come back here!”
That summer, Wilshire had a couple of Sunday evening events in the church’s Fellowship Hall, both of which involved a casual atmosphere AND homemade ice cream. It helped us to get to know people a little better. At one of those, George did a full-on critique of the red-hot (in more than one way) Left Behind series of books and films, and exposed that whole theology as fraudulent, unscriptural, and decidedly unChristian. At another, George sat on stage for an hour-and-a-half and took whatever questions people wanted to ask him. We were struck by his humility, his transparency, and his depth of character.
Though we also visited First Baptist, Richardson, where our friends Dan and Anita Williams were members, it became obvious that Wilshire was where God wanted us. We joined Wilshire on August 29, when Wilshire was celebrating George’s 15th anniversary as senior pastor. Our friend Phil Strickland was on the chancel that day, and he gave us a wink when he saw us walking down the aisle during the invitation hymn.
Wilshire, rather than having graded Sunday School for adults, lets you sample a variety of classes and choose the one that fits you. Also, rather than follow a standard curriculum throughout the Sunday School, Wilshire grants each class the freedom to set its own curriculum and format. Joanna and I spent several weeks visiting different classes, but nothing really clicked for either of us.
Then we attended our new member orientation in the parlor. Laura Dodgen was assigned to speak to us and find out our interests to help us determine where we might serve and so forth. She asked us whether we had found a Sunday School class. When we replied that we hadn’t, she invited us to visit her class, the Epiphany Class. So we did just that the following week.
After years spent in classes at our church in Plano where the same pat answers were the rule, where pablum was the spiritual food of choice, where my attempts to suggest a different way of looking at things . . . of interpreting scripture . . . were received with blank stares and deaf ears, Epiphany Class was a revelation! Members challenged each other, pushed each other’s buttons, yet – at the end of the day – loved and cared for each other. They asked challenging questions of the teacher.
Especially impressive was their ability and eagerness to suggest different ways of thinking about and interpreting scripture. At our former church, I drew blank stares when I did that. In Epiphany Class at Wilshire, such suggestions were routinely bouncing around the room. These folks actually cared enough to search the scriptures and ponder them in new ways, to let the Holy Spirit work within and through them rather than just accept the “official” interpretations.
Above and beyond all of this, Joanna and I have been impressed – throughout the years in Epiphany Class – by the variety of advocacy and missions efforts in which class members are engaged, efforts aimed at following Jesus’s admonition in Matthew 25 to care for “the least of these.”
Joanna and I found that Epiphany Class was a place where we could actually learn and grow rather than stagnate. We had found kindred spirits like we had not known in churches before Wilshire. Joanna’s gone now, but I have a feeling that her spirit is still sitting next to me in Epiphany every Sunday . . . 20-1/2 years later, Epiphany Class is still home for us.
Over the years since Joanna and I joined Wilshire in 2004, the church has moved ever more forcefully into advocacy ministry. Around 2014 (if memory serves), Wilshire added a ministerial staff position to focus on advocacy. Since January 2022, I have served on the Christian Advocacy Committee, led by Wilshire’s missions and advocacy pastor, Heather Mustain. In 2025, this committee was merged with the missions committee to create the Missions and Advocacy Committee, because Wilshire sees missions and advocacy as inseparable partners in ministering to our community and beyond. This is yet another of the remarkable advocacy opportunities with which I’ve been blessed over the years. Under Heather’s creative leadership, we’ve been able to carry Wilshire’s ministry to untold numbers of people with a wide variety of needs. Thanks be to God.