As I sat in Sunday School and worship at Wilshire last Sunday, March 8, I found myself thinking about all of the ways in which my 75-year journey has intersected, either directly or indirectly, with Wilshire’s.
I was born on March 14, 1951, in Harris Hospital in Fort Worth. Wilshire was born 3 months to the day later, on June 14, 1951, in a gathering of about 70 people at a home in Dallas. This blog post consists of a number of . . . well, you might call them vignettes in some cases . . . but basically, they’re snapshots of my life and Wilshire’s life and the numerous ways in which our two separate 75-year journeys have intertwined over the years.
BILL TANNER – WILSHIRE IN 1954, OBU IN 1971, DADDY’S BOSS IN 1976
In her book, Blest Be the Tie: The Heritage of Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, Karen O’Dell Bullock records that “Sunday morning dawned clear and bright on July 18 [1954] for Wilshire’s Chapel Dedication Day. The services of the day were the beginning of a week of revival meetings, led by guest evangelist W. G. Tanner, a graduate of Baylor University and current pastor of the West Road Baptist Church of Houston, Texas.”
Seventeen years later, in the fall of 1971, as I entered my junior year at Oklahoma Baptist University, William G. Tanner was inaugurated as president of OBU. I still remember the joke he told at the university’s Fall Convocation service each year, about the mother who went to her son’s bedroom to tell him he’d better get up and get ready or he’d be late for school.
The son resisted. “But mama, I don’t want to go. Nobody likes me there, and they’re all mean to me.”
“Son,” she replied, “you must go. After all, you’re the president of the school!”
In 1976, Dr. Tanner was elected president of the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, where Daddy served as an area missionary director in the Department of Interfaith Witness. Yes, Bill Tanner was now Daddy’s boss. In the years to come, Daddy would tell stories of department meetings where Daddy, a University of Texas grad, and Tanner, a Baylor grad, would see who could beat the other to the punch with the latest Aggie joke.
But now I know that my connection with Bill Tanner actually began in 1954, when I was just 3, when he spoke at the dedication of the Chapel at Wilshire, which Joanna and I would one day call home.
WILSHIRE & ME – LEAVING THE SBC
In March 2000, the pastor of our church in Plano wrote to our church of his concern over some recent decisions of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) and his decision to convene a task force of members to “reconsider our church’s relationship to the BGCT.” Considering what I had considered egregious violations of Baptist principles over the years, combined with the recent (1998) formation of a rival fundamentalist convention, the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, I considered that his action was likely a political move.
This was the catalyst that I had needed for so long. Though I had often expressed – during Sunday School class discussions – my concerns over the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), and our church’s continued support of the fundamentalist leaders of the SBC, I had never confronted the pastor with those concerns. However, after reading his letter to the church body, I felt I could not afford to stay silent any longer.
Over the next few days, I wrote a two-page letter to the pastor, accompanied by a five-page statement of my position on what was popularly known as the “SBC Controversy.” Before mailing it on a Thursday morning, I prayed. It wasn’t exactly drops of blood like Jesus’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, but it felt about like that. I took that letter to the Post Office and dropped it in the slot with great trepidation. I didn’t know how he would respond.
He had been called as pastor in November 1989, barely two years after Joanna & I had joined that church, and had attained a strong reservoir of support. During that decade-plus, I had seen him go from saying, when he came in 1989 “in view of call,” as we Baptists like to say, that he had usually voted for the moderate candidate for SBC president instead of the fundamentalist candidate, to, only 2½ years later, during the U.S. presidential contest between George Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot, bragging – from the pulpit during a Sunday morning sermon – about receiving a call from Adrian Rogers and other fundamentalist SBC leaders, asking him to facilitate a George Bush campaign appearance in Dallas, a task which he was only too glad to accept.
From that time on, it became clear to Joanna and me that this pastor had seen the deeply conservative political bent of that church – and, more critically, a rejection of the traditional Baptist commitment to the separation of church and state – and decided to follow the parade rather than lead it.
So I had every reason to see a political motive behind his letter to the church.
He called me the very next day, said he had received my letter and statement, and asked if I would like to come in to discuss the matter with him. So we made an appointment and met the following week in his office. He was very cordial; nevertheless, it was obvious that we were running along two very different tracks. He asked me whether I would like to be appointed to the task force that he had mentioned in his letter to the church, and I agreed that I would.
The task force consisted of seven members plus the pastor acting in an ex-officio capacity. For having only seven members, our group covered a pretty wide spectrum in our attitudes toward the SBC and its fundamentalist leadership. Though the question before us was the church’s relationship to the BGCT, we couldn’t help but discuss the BGCT’s relationship to the SBC, and, ultimately, our church’s own relationship to the SBC.
We met for about a year. Our final report recommended that we decrease the church’s contribution to the BGCT by one-third AND do the same with regard to its contribution to the SBC.
But the event that is critical to the purpose of this blog post occurred early in our deliberations. When we met on the second Sunday evening in June 2000, I said to the group that I was concerned that the SBC leadership was determined to scuttle the traditional historic Baptist principles of the priesthood of the believer and soul competency. The pastor said he didn’t believe that was true. I responded that what he did or didn’t believe really didn’t matter, because their actions over the years proved my point. I then declared, “I no longer consider myself a Southern Baptist. I am a member of a church that happens to be affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, but I cannot in good conscience continue to consider myself a Southern Baptist, because they have abandoned Baptist principles.”
Later that week, the SBC met in Orlando, Florida, and there was an attempt to remove the priesthood of the believer and soul competency from the Baptist Faith and Message. It was only because of the efforts of a determined group of Texas Baptists, led by Charles Wade, that caused that attempt to fail.
In her book, Blest Be the Tie: The Heritage of Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, Karen O’Dell Bullock writes, “In October 2000, the church considered severing its formal relationship to the Southern Baptist Convention. . . . In recent years, Wilshire had grown increasingly concerned that the current SBC leadership was moving in a direction that the church did not support; namely, that Wilshire preferred ‘affirmations over prescriptions and . . . dedication to freedom over dogma.’ . . . On November 15, 2000, Wilshire members attending the Quarterly Church Conference considered the resolution that Wilshire Baptist Church should terminate its affiliation with the SBC. . . . When members rendered their votes, no hands lifted to oppose the vote, only two persons abstained from the voting, and all others voted unanimously for the proposal. The motion carried.”
So I declared my independence from the Southern Baptist Convention in June 2000. Wilshire did the same five months later.
PHIL STRICKLAND
In 1995, frustrated at the latest attacks on religious liberty by our church in Plano, I called my brother-in-law, Palmer McCown, then Baptist student minister at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, to ask whether he knew of any “moderate” Baptist churches in the Dallas area.
Palmer suggested I call his friend, Phil Strickland, director of the Christian Life Commission (CLC) of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT), and ask him.
When I spoke with Phil, he mentioned Wilshire, where he was a long-time member, but the moment passed. I was deeply involved in our church’s music ministry – even singing in AND directing a new mixed choral ensemble. I was enjoying those activities, and Joanna & I apparently decided to stay despite our frustration with the church.
But God wasn’t through using Phil Strickland in our lives – not by a long shot!
In the early 2000s, I began attending the annual meeting of the BGCT. I had gotten to know Suzii Paynter and her husband Roger during our family’s frequent visits with my dad to his home church, First Baptist, Austin, where Roger was pastor. Suzii was Phil’s assistant director at the CLC.
While attending the BGCT annual meeting in those early 2000s, I would stop by the CLC booth and talk to Suzii and Phil about the numerous actions, practices, and attitudes, at our church in Plano, that I considered a violation of historic Baptist principles. Both lent sympathetic ears and offered words of encouragement. I needed encouragers, and they were chief among them, along with friends like David Currie.
By 2004, Joanna and I had determined it was time to leave our church in Plano. We would leave at the beginning of the summer, when the ensemble I directed began its annual summer hiatus.
In early May, I drove to San Antonio to attend Phil’s annual CLC Conference at Trinity Baptist Church. George Mason was one of three keynote speakers on the program. It was the first time I had ever heard George speak, and it was a revelation to me. I had no idea there was a pastor like George in the Dallas area.
George introduced himself to me during a break that first afternoon. That evening, I called Joanna, who was at home in Plano, and told her that we MUST visit Wilshire. The next day, I told George that we lived in Plano, were unhappy with our church home for 17 years because it was headed toward fundamentalism, and George replied, “Well, we’re right down the road from you.”
On July 4, Joanna and I visited Wilshire for the first time. On our way there, Joanna said, “I don’t know if I want to drive a half-hour to church every week.” Then she heard George preach a sermon titled “The Cross and the Flag,” in which he gave an entirely different perspective on Baptists and patriotism than we had seen presented at our church in Plano through the years. We hadn’t even reached the parking lot afterwards when Joanna said, “I want to come back here!”
And we did! We visited several more times during the summer until we became convinced that God wanted us at Wilshire. We walked the aisle on the morning of August 29, 2004, as Wilshire was celebrating George Mason’s 15th anniversary as senior pastor. On the chancel that day – to make a presentation to George – was our friend Phil Strickland, who was beaming as he saw us coming forward to join the church. He gave us a little wink of approval.
BRUCE MCIVER
Though we didn’t join Wilshire until 2004, Joanna and I had opportunities well before then.
- From January 1994 until Mother’s passing in March 1997, my sister, Patsy McCown, and I rotated weekends traveling to Austin – Patsy from Abilene and me from Plano – to help our parents. Mother had suffered a bacterial infection on Christmas Eve 1993, which caused her to be bedridden the rest of her life.
- On one of those weekends, as I drove back home on a Sunday morning, I happened upon Wilshire’s worship service on the radio. Bruce McIver, Wilshire’s former long-time pastor, was preaching that Sunday. It has stuck in my memory, because he told a story from his book, Stories I Couldn’t Tell While I Was a Pastor. That week, I went to my local Waldenbooks or B. Dalton Bookseller, don’t remember which, and bought a copy, then read it cover-to-cover and laughed throughout.
- But what if George Mason had preached that Sunday? What if I had heard the then-current pastor instead of the former pastor? The first time I heard George speak, in 2004, I called Joanna & told her that we must visit Wilshire. After our first visit in July 2004, all it took was one sermon by George Mason for Joanna to exclaim, “I want to come back here!”
- So, if I had heard George on the radio that Sunday morning in the mid-1990s, might we have made it to Wilshire years earlier than we did? Was God – through first Phil Strickland, and then Bruce McIver – trying to get our attention? Perhaps.
In the fall of 2010, the Texas Baptists Committed board voted to ask me to serve as executive director. I began work on January 1, 2011. One of the first things I did, beginning on Monday, January 3, was to begin posting, to the TBC website, 2- to 3-minute videos on Baptist history and principles, which I titled “Baptist Briefs.” Over the next few months, I produced and posted – every day, Monday through Friday – a new video in this series, culminating in a total of 71 videos. Most of these videos were done in series.
Of all these videos, one series remains my favorite – a series of six videos I produced on the Youth Revival Movement that was conceived at Baylor University in the fall of 1944 and birthed with a Waco revival the following spring. I relied on one source for these videos: Bruce McIver’s Riding the Wind of God: A Personal History of the Youth Revival Movement. Yes, Wilshire’s longtime pastor had been a participant, from the beginning, in that movement that spread from Baylor to other Texas Baptist universities and, eventually, to Baptist schools in other states.
No book – before or since – has moved me as did Riding the Wind of God: A Personal History of the Youth Revival Movement. To prepare for my video series, I read Bruce McIver’s book over two nights. The first night, I found myself in tears, overwhelmed by the faith shown by those Baylor students in 1944. God had laid it on their hearts that Waco needed revival, and they realized very quickly that revival could come only through God’s blessing. They acknowledged that they were not personally up to the task, but God was. So they prayed together, night after night, often until 2 or 3 a.m., in their dorm rooms.
The second night, I found myself in tears again. This time, my tears resulted from realizing my own inadequacy, just as those students had acknowledged theirs. In the pages of Bruce McIver’s book, I was reading names of men – Louis Cobbs, Jimmy Allen (by 1947, the movement had spread to Howard Payne Univ., where Jimmy was a student), and others – alongside whom I was now working, over 60 years later, on the board of the T. B. Maston Foundation for Christian Ethics.
So, late at night (Joanna had already been asleep for hours), I paced around our living room, crying out to God through my tears, “God, are you sure you know what you’re doing, having me working alongside men like these? I’ll never be able to accomplish what they’ve accomplished for you!”
Then, in one of the seminal moments of my life, I heard the still, small voice of God – not audible, but perhaps more powerful than any I had ever heard – say to me, “That is not your concern. Your only concern is to be faithful to what I have called you to do.”
Four years earlier, my niece, Stephanie, had eloquently characterized her grandparents – my parents – at Daddy’s memorial service by saying their main characteristic was faithfulness. God brought Stephanie’s words back to my mind that night, along with the example set by my parents – telling me to just be faithful to what He had called me to do.
Friends, that moment has shaped my work, my ministry at both Texas Baptists Committed and the Maston Foundation, my life, and all of my relationships and responsibilities ever since..
The next day, I began work on that video series on the Youth Revival Movement. I produced and posted the first of those six videos on March 2, 2011.
That summer, Wilshire celebrated its 60th anniversary. During that celebration, I met Bruce McIver’s widow, Lawanna, and told her how much his book on the Youth Revival Movement had meant to me, and that I had produced a video series based on his book. At her request, I sent her the link. She later told me that she had enjoyed my videos and had shared the link with her grandchildren. What better affirmation could I have, that I had been faithful to her late husband’s work?
I never got to meet Bruce McIver. He passed away almost 3 years before Joanna and I arrived at Wilshire. But I’ll always feel a strong connection to him and am forever grateful for the impact he has had on my life.
TEXAS BAPTISTS COMMITTED & DAVID R. CURRIE
In the preceding section, “WILSHIRE & ME – LEAVING THE SBC,” I wrote about the two-page letter I wrote in March 2000, to the pastor of our church in Plano, accompanied by a five-page statement of my position on the “SBC Controversy.”
A few months later, I mailed a copy of my letter & statement to David Currie, executive director of Texas Baptists Committed, the organization that had saved the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) from fundamentalist control in the 1990s. David soon called me, expressing his appreciation for the stand I had taken. His associate director, Charlie McLaughlin, called me in January 2001 and asked for permission to publish an excerpt in the upcoming TBC Newsletter. I was pleased to see my article appear right next to President Jimmy Carter’s statement that he and Rosalynn were leaving the Southern Baptist Convention, only months after I had made the same declaration to our pastor and members of the task force to which he had appointed me.
The portion that TBC chose to excerpt was a story told years before by James L. Sullivan, former president of the SBC Sunday School Board, that he had been warned in 1970 that a faction was planning to take over the SBC; when Sullivan asked the man what would be the underlying issue of their takeover attempt, the man admitted they hadn’t “chosen” it yet, but they would come up with something that would throw the SBC into chaos and confusion. This, I wrote, was proof that the issue they “chose” – inerrancy – was nothing but a straw man.
I had heard this story on a cassette tape of a 1993 Texas Baptists Committed convocation. The speaker was Jim Denison, then pastor of First Baptist Church, Midland. By March 2000, when I wanted to include this in the statement I was writing, he was pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas. I didn’t want to include this story in my statement without documentation. So I called his home on a Saturday evening and spoke with his wife, Janet. She told me that Park Cities had a Saturday evening worship service, so he was at church. She then assured me that she would call him before he left the church to let him know about my request. He called me around 9:30, and we spoke for a half-hour. He was extremely understanding and sympathetic when I told him about the frustrations my wife and I were experiencing at our church. Before he left the church, he faxed documentation of that story to me. It was my retelling of this story that TBC published in its January 2001 newsletter.
On an evening in the fall of 2001, TBC held an event in the Wilshire sanctuary. The speaker that night was my friend Jim Denison. I took a friend from my church in Plano with me that evening. Afterwards, we stood in line to talk to Jim Denison. As we stood in line, I heard a booming voice that sounded very familiar. Sure enough, it was Richard Wallis, who had been pastor of my home church in Kansas City, MO, when I was a teenager and even through my college years. In fact, I had met with him once in the early 1970s for counsel concerning my faith struggle. He and his wife, Evelyn, were now members of Wilshire, as was their daughter, Sondra. We spoke for several minutes and had a joyous reunion – Richard Wallis was not only one of the finest biblical scholars I have ever heard speak, he was as gracious and welcoming as any person I’ve ever known. Sadly, it turned out to be the last time I saw him. He passed away in January 2004, several months before Joanna and I visited Wilshire in our search for a new church home. Thanks be to God, Texas Baptists Committed, and Wilshire Baptist Church for making that last meeting possible.
In July 2017, the TBC Board and I – as executive director – decided to cease operations. Our support had dwindled, and we simply didn’t have sufficient funds to continue.
In August 2018, Wilshire partnered with the TBC Board to give me a retirement dinner. To be “feted” by the luminaries who paid tribute to me that evening was way beyond anything I could have ever imagined or deserved, and I was fortunate to count every one of them as a dear friend:
- Wilshire member George Gagliardi, “poet and pilgrim,” who had written a song in my honor (?), sang “Big Bad Bill Jones” (to the tune of Jimmy Dean’s “Big John”), accompanying himself on guitar
- Wilshire member Lance Currie, the last chair of the TBC Board, emceed the event (and called me “a great man” – isn’t hyperbole a great thing?)
- Babs Baugh (via previously recorded video), the most Baptist Baptist I ever knew, whose generous contributions to TBC always came when we needed them most; I loved our phone conversations on Baptist issues, and I learned so much from Babs
- Marv Knox (via previously recorded video), then executive director of Fellowship Southwest and former editor & publisher of the Baptist Standard newsjournal
- Panel discussion
- George Mason, moderator, senior pastor, Wilshire Baptist Church
- David Currie, my predecessor as executive director of Texas Baptists Committed, who saved the BGCT from fundamentalist control in the 1990s
- Charlie Johnson, executive director of Pastors for Texas Children
- Suzii Paynter, executive coordinator, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
As you see, Wilshire and Texas Baptists Committed collaborated in many ways over the years to influence my journey.
TEXAS BAPTIST LAITY INSTITUTE, TIM GILBERT, T. B. MASTON FOUNDATION FOR CHRISTIAN ETHICS
In Blest Be the Tie: The Heritage of Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, Karen O’Dell Bullock writes, “In March [2000], Wilshire became involved in a pilot venture launched by the BGCT to train lay persons in theological education. The Texas Baptist Laity Institute, as it was called, sought to provide doctrinally sound and intellectually demanding theological education for those persons who were either at present in, or wanted to fulfill, positions of leadership in ministry.”
In 2001, David Currie sent an email to his list of Texas Baptists Committed supporters living in the Dallas area, informing us of an opportunity to train to be “mentors” (teachers) for the Texas Baptist Laity Institute. The training was to take place on a Saturday at Wilshire. I took advantage of the opportunity. In the morning session, we received general training on the process of becoming a mentor. It was during this session that I met Dan Williams, who would, in time, become one of my closest friends until his untimely passing from prostate cancer in 2016.
In the afternoon, we chose from several subjects and received specialized training in teaching that subject.
I chose the Baptist Distinctives class led by Dr. Bill Pinson, an old friend – and fellow T. B. Maston Christian Ethics Th.D. grad – of my dad. He had written the text that we were to use for the course.
The process of becoming a mentor included getting recommendations from two ministers. That was easy. I asked my pastor and minister of music to write recommendations for me, which they were glad to do. I got certified as a mentor by the Laity Institute.
I began studying the Baptist Distinctives course in preparation for teaching it. Then I met with the pastor to show him the textbook and ask him to arrange for me to teach the course at the church. Everything was fine until he saw the chapter covering the conflict between moderates and fundamentalists. He said, “I don’t want you teaching this part.”
I was disappointed, but I can’t say I was shocked. It was part of a pattern I had observed over the years. He wanted to keep his congregation ignorant of any conflict, any challenge to the new SBC leadership’s way of being Baptist. I determined that I would not teach at all if I couldn’t teach it all. Partial truth isn’t truth at all!
After Joanna and I arrived at Wilshire in 2004, I found an entirely different environment. Here was a church that welcomed honest evaluation of faith and its practice. Wilshire had participated, as Karen Bullock wrote, in getting the Laity Institute started and was fully supportive. I soon met Tim Gilbert, who was already teaching Laity Institute classes at Wilshire. I took his Church History course and learned a lot from it. Tim and I soon became good friends, and I soon joined Tim in teaching Laity Institute classes at Wilshire, as well as at First Baptist, Richardson. Eventually, Tim and I partnered in aggressively promoting the Laity Institute classes during the Sunday School hour.
My friendship with Tim led to another surprising opportunity for me. I don’t remember how we got to talking about the T. B. Maston Foundation for Christian Ethics, but we discovered common ground here. Tim was on the Maston board and knew of my dad, Jase Jones, who had been a Th.D. grad in Christian Ethics under Dr. Maston and had been the first chair of the Foundation. We eventually got to talking about the need for the Maston Foundation to have a website, and I mentioned that I had taken some courses in web development.
Tim took my name to the Maston Foundation’s Nominating Committee. In February 2008, the Maston board elected me as a member and tasked me with creating a web presence for the Foundation. The website has gone far beyond what I created, but I came up with the simple web address – tbmaston.org, created the first web pages, and maintained the site for the first several years.
In 2010, the board elected me as vice-chair. Then, in 2012, I was elected to chair the Maston Foundation, a seat my dad had occupied for over a decade in the 1980s and early 1990s. It happened that our board meeting that year was in a conference room at Wilshire, in conjunction with the CLC Conference held at Wilshire that year. So my election as Maston Foundation chair occurred at my home church, which especially pleased me.
I served two 2-year terms as chair, from 2012-2016, and two 6-year terms as a board member, from 2008-2020. My friendship with Tim Gilbert, forged through Wilshire Baptist Church and the Texas Baptist Laity Institute, is largely responsible for that.
In February 2025, I was invited to an event that included the current T. B. Maston Foundation Board as well as former board members. At one point, a speaker asked to determine who in the room had the oldest connection to T. B. Maston. I won easily, because Daddy was studying under Dr. Maston when I was born in March 1951. In fact, because I was “on the way,” Daddy asked and received a 1-month extension on his oral exams, which were originally scheduled for March 16. When I was chair of the Foundation and spoke to the Young Maston Scholars retreat every year, I loved joking to them that, because of the extension granted by Dr. Maston as a result of my impending birth, I had an influence on Dr. Maston before he had an influence on me!
BAPTISM
In 2012, Wilshire voted to begin, as stated on the website (https://wilshirebc.org/about/our-history/), “recognizing other forms of Christian baptism when welcoming new members.” Under George Mason’s leadership, Wilshire consistently approached such questions and potential changes with intentionality and integrity, educating members about all sides of an issue and possible ramifications, then inviting input from all members, letting everyone have their say.
This was a difficult journey for me. A lifelong Baptist who had grown up attending Training Union every Sunday evening, I was steeped in Baptist history and principles. The fundamentalist takeover that began in 1979 had motivated me, for decades, to delve even deeper into Baptist history and the principles that – taken together – distinguished us from other Christian denominations.
Perhaps the most foundational of these distinctives is believer’s baptism by immersion. So, frankly, it offended my Baptist sensibilities to consider my church recognizing a baptism that was otherwise.
However, as Wilshire went through this study together, I came to conclude that the “believer’ part took precedence over the “immersion” part and, ultimately, that even if one had been baptized as an infant – not yet a “believer” – I could accept and recognize her/his baptism if she/he affirmed it as a believer now. Joanna and I both voted “yes” on the issue of “recognizing other forms of Christian baptism when welcoming new members.” Looking to Jesus as our example, we’d rather be too welcoming than too excluding.
OBU BROTHERHOOD DORM BULL SESSIONS & WILSHIRE EPIPHANY CLASS
This connection is a little more indirect than most that I cover in this post, but it is every bit as important to me as any of them.
My 75-year (so far) journey took a sudden twist and turn in the midst of its 20th year, in November 1970, during my sophomore year at Oklahoma Baptist University. One morning in Western Civilization class, I lost the simple unquestioning “faith” with which I had grown up. For more on that, please read “50 years ago today, Nov. 12, 1970, I leapt out of the fundamentalist foxhole.”
I walked into class that morning believing I had all the answers. I was secure in what I called “faith.” Only it wasn’t faith, it was certainty. However, below the surface, there were deep and abiding doubts and questions – about the existence of God, the eternal nature of God, the creation of the universe – that I refused to face, I refused to let come to the surface. I had suppressed them for years. I couldn’t share them with my parents or my pastor, because I wouldn’t even share them with myself!
So I walked into class that morning with all the answers. Jesus was God’s son, my lord and savior . . . all of this was fact, not to be questioned. Then four words from a professor, and the bottom dropped out of my certainty. At the conclusion of that class, I walked out not believing in God, much less that Jesus was God’s son sent to save me from my sin.
But I hadn’t given up on the possibility of God. I began searching for what I could believe about creation, salvation, the purpose of life, and so forth. This search went on for years and in some sense continues today, though I long ago came back to faith in Christ.
However, my search wasn’t solitary. I had help. OBU – where I had lost my faith – turned out to be instrumental in helping me to discover a deeper faith. I first had to learn how to search, how to struggle, how to think for myself, how to ask questions, how to look for answers, and how to discern the real from the phony, the solid and durable from the flimsy and ephemeral.
The OBU of the early 1970s was a Baptist institution that encouraged students to honestly confront their questions and doubts. Many students came there like I had, thinking they had all the answers. Some never changed, just grew more convinced in their certainty. Others, like me, discovered that the small god we had brought with us to OBU wasn’t worth the investment of our lives; if we were fortunate, like me, we found fellow travelers in the dorm who had already traveled a ways down that road and could help us along the way.
For me, it was friends like Cary Wood, Ron Russey, Phil Brown, Paul Krueger, who – in late-night bull sessions – helped me to begin my search and gave me the tools I needed. Ron Russey also pointed me across the street to Jerry Barnes, pastor of University Baptist Church, who – when I told him I no longer believed in God – said, “Come join our church,” which I did. Jerry’s challenging preaching showed me a much bigger God than I had known before. Jerry met with me once a semester in his office, for me to update him on the progress of my search and for him to help suggest some next steps for me to take. Jerry, too, encouraged me to grapple honestly with my questions and doubts.
When I called Joanna from San Antonio in May 2004, after hearing George speak at the CLC Conference, I told her, “I think I may have finally found another Jerry Barnes,” meaning a pastor who would challenge me to question, to learn, to grow in my faith. I had been searching for such a one for almost 30 years.
Joanna and I joined Wilshire on August 29, 2004. A few weeks later, we visited Epiphany Sunday School Class for the first time. We never left. We had found our home – at Wilshire and in Epiphany Class.
After spending 17 years in Sunday School classes at our church in Plano, hearing nothing but pat answers, and being discouraged from posing any scriptural interpretation that deviated from the “official” Southern Baptist version, we had found a class where people challenged each other with regularity. These folks actually used the minds God had given them!
In our church in Plano, my efforts to offer a different way of looking at scripture were tolerated at best. Teachers routinely put their own spin on my comments, twisting them until I no longer recognized them as my thoughts.
In Epiphany Class at Wilshire, such efforts on my part were just par for the course, because everyone was seeking a deeper understanding and was unafraid to entertain ideas that would challenge their own notions of scripture, of God, of Jesus, and so on.
As I began to consider the intersection between my 75-year journey and Wilshire’s, I made this connection that I don’t think I had ever made in my 21½ years in Epiphany Class – the connection between this class and those late-night bull sessions in Brotherhood Dorm.
I was searching then, and I’m still searching now. In both instances, my search has been helped by discussion with people who – like Joanna and me – are unafraid to question, to express their doubts, to challenge each other to dig for a deeper understanding of God, of Jesus, and of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
Thanks be to God – for those Brotherhood Dorm friends of 55 years ago, and for our Epiphany friends of the past 21½ years. They have been instrumental not only in my faith journey but Joanna’s as well. She loved this class as do I.
VOTING ON TREATMENT OF LGBTQ CHURCH MEMBERS AND DEFENDING LOCAL CHURCH AUTONOMY
In November 2016, Wilshire voted, about 60% to 40% if memory serves, to recognize only one class of membership. What this meant, in effect, was that we would no longer treat people identifying as LGBTQ differently than other church members. They could be married at Wilshire, be baptized at Wilshire, have their children dedicated at Wilshire, serve as deacons, Sunday School teachers, and so forth. In other words, any privilege afforded to Wilshire members would be afforded to them as equal members.
This was a journey for any of us who did not identify as LGBTQ. For some, it was a longer journey than others. In the mid-1990s, my parents had left their church, University Baptist in Austin, because it voted to become welcoming and affirming toward those identifying as LGBTQ. At a meeting called to discuss this issue, my father – a longtime Baptist minister – had spoken out against such a decision.
Now, in 2015, their son’s church was discussing such an action, as was the church they had joined in the ‘90s – First Baptist of Austin.
Under George Mason’s leadership, Wilshire consistently approached such questions and potential changes with intentionality and integrity, educating members about all sides of an issue and possible ramifications, then inviting input from all members, letting everyone have their say. The process followed on the LGBTQ issue was even more deliberate, if that is possible, than that followed on the baptism issue in 2011-12.
For about a year-and-a-half, we heard from experts in various fields, including theology, science, medicine, and mental and behavioral health; met with other members in roundtable discussions, each of us having her/his say in small-group settings; and met in Community Hall for open forums where all were invited to speak.
During this period, David Hardage, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT), sent a letter to pastors of all BGCT-affiliated churches. He warned them that any action taken to welcome people identifying as LGBTQ would jeopardize the church’s relationship with the BGCT. Soon after receiving that letter, George Mason asked to have lunch with me.
Though I had not yet come to a “welcoming and affirming” stance, I had become increasingly concerned about Texas Baptists’ treatment of people identifying as LGBTQ. Nevertheless, I had continued to play it safe as executive director of Texas Baptists Committed (TBC). It had always been TBC’s position to give our full support to the BGCT. Publicly confronting BGCT leadership, especially on a hot-button issue such as this, was not a consideration. So I remained silent on the LGBTQ matter while supporting the BGCT against accusations made by the rival Southern Baptists of Texas Convention that the BGCT was “gay-friendly.”
Then came my lunch with George. He told me about the letter that he and other pastors had received from David Hardage. George never told me to take a stronger stand. That isn’t the way George Mason treats people – he isn’t one for pressure tactics. Instead, he shared what was on his heart, and that was enough. He was concerned about people who had been marginalized simply because of who they were and who they loved, and that David Hardage was making it almost impossible for Texas Baptist churches to minister to these people who were, whether or not the church realized it, in every Texas Baptist church.
After that lunch with George, I was – to use an old tried-and-true Baptist phrase – under conviction by the Holy Spirit. In the coming months, I met with David Hardage twice in his office. Both times, I pushed him on this issue. I told him that I was concerned that churches were trying to minister to the LGBTQ people in their congregations and their communities, and that his actions weren’t giving them the space to do that. I asked him whether he could just simply not make it an issue, just let churches minister in the way they felt God leading them to do. Every time I asked David this question, he replied, “I don’t know.” Well, I think he did know. There was never any indication of a change in his attitude.
My conversation over lunch with George Mason had made me realize I needed to follow my convictions if I were to be true to myself and true to my responsibility to lead Texas Baptists Committed. Though it was not TBC’s role to dictate theology, it was our role to defend historic Baptist principles against Baptists who violated them. One of those principles was local church autonomy – the right of every congregation to decide matters of faith and practice for their church.
Wilshire’s vote was taken in November 2016, over two Sundays, to give as many members as possible the opportunity to vote. It had been a long journey to this point for Joanna and me, as well as the rest of our church’s membership. Joanna and I voted “yes” to declaring only one equal class of members at Wilshire Baptist Church.
Before that final vote, George acknowledged to the congregation that being on the “losing” side of an issue like this was likely to cause some members to leave and that “this will be the last time that all of us are in this room together.” He then said that, for those who might decide to leave Wilshire after this vote was announced, he had only one thing to say: “Thank you.” He thanked them for all they had meant to him and to the church and assured them that they would always be welcome at Wilshire, if or when they ever chose to return. It was a moment of grace that I don’t believe I have seen equaled, certainly never exceeded, in my 75 years of church attendance. That’s George Mason – the grace of Jesus shines through his spirit.
George announced the result on Monday, November 14, which happened to be the first day of the annual meeting of the BGCT. If memory serves, about 60% had voted “yes.” Wilshire would from then on recognize only one equal class of members. On Tuesday, BGCT messengers would vote on removing churches that were deemed “not in friendly cooperation” with the convention, specifically on the LGBTQ issue.
Tuesday morning, in my remarks at our annual Texas Baptists Committed breakfast, I said:
“I contend – on behalf of Texas Baptists Committed – that BGCT leadership is violating local church autonomy. Now some will say, ‘well, we’re not telling them what to do.’ But neither did the Fundamentalists who took over the Southern Baptist Convention force any churches to do anything – they just threatened loss of fellowship. In fighting the Fundamentalists’ attempt in the 1990s to take control of the BGCT, we called such threats a violation of local church autonomy. On that basis, Texas Baptists Committed – led by David Currie – fought to keep the Baptist General Convention of Texas free from Fundamentalist control. Yet now BGCT leadership is taking a similar path. Where does it stop?
“TBC is not asking the BGCT to change its historic position that scripture calls homosexual behavior sinful. I’m well aware that the BGCT’s position reflects that of the vast majority of BGCT churches, and I respect their right to hold that position. In turn, however, if the BGCT is going to continue to call itself Baptist, we expect it to respect the right of its cooperating churches to disagree. That’s what makes us Baptist – we disagree, we dissent on those matters that are not central to our faith, and where we stand theologically on this issue is not central to our faith and should not determine whether we can faithfully cooperate with each other in sharing Christ with a hurting world.”
Later that day, messengers voted to instruct the BGCT Executive Board to declare any churches taking action contrary to the convention’s official stance on people identifying as LGBTQ – meaning, specifically, Wilshire, FBC Austin, and Lake Shore Drive Waco – “not in friendly cooperation” with the convention.
In February 2017, I was in the room, as a guest observer, as the Executive Board voted to remove Wilshire, FBC Austin, and Lake Shore Drive Waco from BGCT affiliation. As the Board deliberated and voted, I was writing a blog post entitled, “When family doesn’t want you anymore.”
Two days later, my son Travis was in the hospital following a seizure. George Mason came out to visit him. After the visit, I walked with George to the hospital’s entrance. I told him about being in the room as the Executive Board voted to kick Wilshire out of the convention. George turned to me, and he broke out in a bright smile, saying, “But you know what, Bill? Now we’re free to be the church that God wants us to be!”
To that I say, “Amen” and “Thanks be to God.”
GROWING IN FAITH WITH JOANNA
Joanna and I found a home at Wilshire.
Joanna and me in 1974, OBU Hanging of the Green
When we met and began dating at Oklahoma Baptist University in 1972-73, her freshman year and my senior year, there was no “faith” for us to share.
- Joanna had no religious background, growing up in Hong Kong. No religious faith was practiced in her home.
- I had come out of a very strong Southern Baptist home. My dad was a Baptist minister employed by the SBC Home Mission Board. My mother worked for the SBC Annuity Board when we lived in Dallas (1957-62), then was a secretary at our church in Kansas City, MO (1962-66) before moving to a secretarial position at the Kansas City Baptist Association (1966-71), where Daddy officed.
- However, during my sophomore year at OBU, I lost my faith. When Joanna and I met, I was in the midst of a very deep faith struggle and search.
Joanna and me, April 2012, in Israel with Wilshire Baptist Church & Temple Emanu-El
Considering all of this, I find it nothing short of miraculous to consider how God worked in our lives over the 48 years we were together before Joanna’s passing in 2021. She accepted Christ and was baptized in August 1981. By that time, I had returned to faith in Christ. Together, over the next 40 years, we grew together in faith, helping each other. She was at least as much an influence on me as I was on her, probably greater.
But our faith stagnated at the church in Plano, where we were members from 1987-2004. Whether Sunday School classes or worship services and sermons, it was pretty much pablum, and much of it – especially the emphasis on nationalism at the expense of worship of Jesus – was downright blasphemous and objectionable.
Then we found a home at Wilshire, a home where we were loved without reservation, where people didn’t look at us askance for our “radical” views on living the love of Jesus to others, looking out for the marginalized, helping those in great need without judging them, and so forth. We found a home at Wilshire, a home where we were encouraged to honestly grapple with our questions and doubts, and even discuss them with others, helping each other to learn and grow in faith. We found a home at Wilshire, a home where science, scripture, and faith were celebrated as all part of God’s truth.
We found a home at Wilshire, where our 17-year stagnation at our church in Plano gave way to continual growth, to a growing faith that embraced all that the Holy Spirit wants to show us.
April 4, Easter Sunday, 2021 – Alison, Travis, and I inurned Joanna’s cremains in Wilshire’s Columbarium
After Joanna’s passing in February 2021, I found a letter in her desk, and it pleased me to know that she had kept it. I wrote it a year or two before she passed away. Joanna was always reluctant to pray aloud or to speak out in Sunday School, etc. She was not confident in her ability to articulate her faith. In the letter, however, I told her that I always considered her a better Christian than I was. She lived out her faith quietly, just as Jesus told his disciples to do.
When she finally spoke out publicly, via Zoom during a Sunday School class only weeks before she passed away, her words carried greater weight than anything I ever said. We were all sharing our feelings about the January 6 riot at the Capitol that had occurred that week. Joanna surprised us all when she spoke out, movingly and tearfully, about the fear that she felt, as an Asian-American woman, after Trump had used terms like “China virus” and “Kung flu.” She said that she was afraid to walk out into our suburban neighborhood, for fear that someone might be targeting Asians, with permission from the president of the United States.
She had spoken from our bedroom, where she was on her phone, sitting in her recliner. I had been on my desktop computer in my study. As soon as class was over, I ran to the bedroom and said, “Babe, I am so proud of you,” because I knew the courage it had taken for her to speak out like that.
On January 30, we received a call telling us that a kidney transplant was available. Surgery would be the next day in Fort Worth. That afternoon, though, we drove down to Baylor Hospital in Dallas to have her blood drawn to ensure that her body was up to the surgery. As we drove, she said, “Well, I’ve finally decided that I like your suggestion. I want my body to be cremated and inurned in the Wilshire Columbarium.” Joanna had been through surgery before, and she knew that any surgery was risky, so she had decided to settle this question just in case.
On Easter Sunday, April 4, 2021, Alison, Travis, and I placed her cremains in the niche, in Wilshire’s Columbarium, where mine will one day join hers. George Mason delivered a beautiful eulogy, in which he said Joanna had “resurrection eyes.” Amen, and thanks be to God.