Remembering a Good Friend and Bright Leader - John Petty, by Phil Lineberger

(reprinted from the May 4, 2011, issue of TBC Weekly Baptist Roundup) Remembering a Good Friend and Bright Leader - John Petty   by Phil Lineberger Pastor, Sugar Land Baptist Church; and Vice-Chair, TBC Board of Directors   The mantle of leadership fell comfortably around the shoulders of John Petty. He was well-educated, with a bright and inquisitive mind. He was a caring and engaged minister to his church members and to the wider Baptist audience. He had a strength of will and an ability to make wise and informed decisions. John's sense of humor put people at ease in his presence. He studied and applied himself to the practice of preaching. John Petty   Because of his God-given abilities and his concern for Baptist principles, John was selected for leadership at a young age. In every leadership capacity, John served well. We saw and admired the gifts and commitment of John Petty.   What we didn't see was the darkness of depression that was gradually overcoming this young leader's mental and emotional capacities. Slowly but surely, this disease of depression - along with the long-term chronic stress of ministry - overcame John's will to live. He was being changed in ways that he alone sensed. It was as Paul stated in his first letter to the Corinthians: "a glass that one sees through darkly or a mirror with a poor reflection." John came to a point where his mental, emotional, and spiritual comprehension was distorted beyond human understanding. He no longer knew how much he was loved and needed by his family, his friends, and God. He could no longer feel the warmth and affection of others. He could no longer respond in a healthy, natural way to those who loved him most. He knew only that the painful struggle he was enduring had to end.   The last time John and I were together was at the BGCT meeting in McAllen, Texas, in November 2010. I encouraged John to go with me so that we could spend some time together and be encouraged. He had shared his struggle with me several months earlier. As we sat and talked, I realized that the John Petty I had known for many years was no longer there. John looked through me and past me as we conversed. It was as if his mind was traveling beyond our time to some distant place and some other destination. What I didn't comprehend was the depth of depression guiding John's thoughts and emotions.   John Petty is gone from this earth but very present in the minds and thoughts of so many. The distance between this world and the next is not as far as we might think. The wall between the two is not as thick as we might imagine. John Petty still has a relationship and influence in the lives of those he loved and served.

Phil Lineberger's wonderful life

It has been less than a week since we lost Phil Lineberger, but it already seems an eternity.

Much has been said and written about Phil this week. Some have spoken of the depression that took his life, some have shared personal reflections of Phil. I expressed my own high regard for my friend Phil in remarks published by Ken Camp in his Baptist Standard article, Former BGCT President Lineberger dead at 69. There were others who were much closer to Phil than I was who will be sharing their own reflections in coming days.

So here I want to offer just one thing I've observed as I've witnessed the outpouring of love and affection for Phil this week.

Every Christmas season, I find myself compelled to pull out my DVD of the 1946 Frank Capra movie, It's a Wonderful Life. Most of you are probably well familiar with the story. George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, finds himself in trouble and wrongly accused of embezzlement; when the miserly Mr. Potter threatens to turn him in to the authorities and says that George's "miserable little $500 equity in a life insurance policy" means that George is "worth more dead than alive," George agrees with him and tries to kill himself but is saved when a bumbling angel named Clarence shows him the remarkable impact George had made on so many lives, as he takes him to see how different - and emptier - their lives would have been if George had never been born. Then Clarence says, "see, George, you really had a wonderful life."

Well, of course, that's fiction. No Hollywood guardian angel was going to save Phil Lineberger from the depression that robbed him of any joy in life and made it impossible for him to think rationally any longer, the insidious illness that kills so many people every year.

But those of us who loved Phil Lineberger can learn something from the gathering that we have done this week - whether at the memorial service yesterday or over Facebook or over the phone, etc. Phil Lineberger lived a wonderful life. Phil Lineberger touched more lives than we will ever know. I have been amazed to hear from people I hadn't seen in years, who either sent "comments" to me on Facebook or approached me at the reception following Phil's service to tell me where they knew Phil and how Phil had touched their lives (one said Phil had performed his wedding ceremony; another told me that he and Phil knew each other as kids in Texarkana). I had had no idea that these friends of mine also knew Phil.

There's a powerful reminder in this outpouring of gratitude by folks who speak of Phil's lasting influence on their lives - that our investment in people is NEVER a bad investment, never turns up a "dry hole," as the oil people say. Giving ourselves to others is the key to a "wonderful life." There are some "returns" on those investments that we will never see, but they will pay dividends over and over as those people invest in others, and so on. What a wonderful testimony to the life that Phil lived, to hear from so many people whose lives he touched.

May we all go forth to live such a "wonderful life."

You CAN go home again: 50 years later, evidence of rich returns on a church'sinvestment in its youth

Last week, I went home. Or at least it sure felt like home. And, with apologies to Thomas Wolfe, I found you CAN go home again. No, things aren't quite the same, but there were times it almost felt like I had been transported back to the 1960s, when I was growing up in Kansas City, Missouri. As I drove through my old neighborhood, I half-expected my parents - who have been with the Lord for many years now - to come walking out of the house we called home back then.

Kansas City was a wonderful place to grow up, and - though it's been over 40 years since I last lived there - I still consider it my hometown.

The occasion that brought me "home" last weekend was the reunion of the youth group that grew up together at Bethany Baptist Church in Kansas City. The church isn't the same these days. As those 1960s youth grew up and moved either out of town or to the suburbs, the neighborhood grew older and the church's membership decreased dramatically. I drove over to the church last Friday and was greeted by the two pastors (the church now has two congregations, one Spanish-speaking and one English-speaking); they were astounded when I told them that when I was growing up there, Bethany ran around 700 weekly in Sunday School. I'm told that the two current congregations can barely fill a Sunday School classroom. The youth and education building, which in those days was bustling with activity - Sunday School & Training Union classes, youth fellowships in the basement, as well as the church offices - was sold many years ago.

But there was a thriving church in the 1960s that is now scattered - in the lives of the youth who grew up there - throughout churches in the Kansas City area and well beyond. We had a vibrant youth group. Our Chapel Choir - under the direction of Joe Dell Rust - went on choir tours almost every year and required two buses to make the trip. In 1965, we were the featured choir one evening at Glorieta Baptist Assembly in New Mexico; on the way there and on the way back, we sang at churches in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. There was a fellowship among those youth that continues today.

At the reunion last Saturday - held in a park in nearby Leawood, Kansas - I saw some old friends I hadn't seen for almost 50 years, and we reconnected as if 1965 were yesterday. After being led in prayer prior to digging into our pot luck lunch, we sang "Blest Be the Tie That Binds (Our Hearts in Christian Love)," and we meant it. The folks in that group have been through a lot the past 50 years - the usual life experiences, such as divorces, deaths of spouses and other loved ones, health challenges, faith journeys that have run into some bumps and detours along the way, and so forth - but they've made it well into the 21st century with a spirit, a winsome, Christ-like spirit, that can't be quenched.

By the magic of Skype, I used my cell phone to bring Joe and Martha Rust - who have lived in North Carolina since leaving Bethany in 1969 and were not able to make the trip to KC - to the reunion, live and on a video screen. For about a half-hour, my phone was passed from one person to the next, as these "youth" - mostly now in our 60s - talked to Joe Rust and helped him to "catch up" on their lives the past 50 years. I eavesdropped on an occasional conversation and was moved to hear one after the other thank Joe, usually with a catch in their throats, for investing in their lives during their most formative years.

I was also moved by one of those former youth who shared with me that his parents were not Christian, that he had no Christian influence in his life until he visited Bethany and got involved in our youth activities, including the choir. He accepted Christ and was baptized at Bethany, and says that Bethany Baptist Church changed his life forever.

Joe Rust, of course, didn't do it alone. There were numerous Sunday School & Training Union teachers, GA & YWA leaders, RA leaders - in fact, one of our RA leaders, Rex Weese, showed up at the reunion. Then there were our pastors during those years, first Luther Dyer and then Richard Wallis. Well, the list is endless . . . so many people, including of course our parents, helped us to grow up, invested themselves in our lives, and the payoff is evident 50 years later.

What a blessing to visit with old friends and find that there is still a "tie" that binds us together. I found myself rushing to hug some of those folks I hadn't seen in so many years. We even had a reunion of the "three beats" - Mike Eaton, Robert Ingold, & yours truly - of the Three Beats and a Half-Note boys' quartet that frequently sang in church and even sang at the state RA convention one year. (Only the "half-note" - Jerry Eaton - was unable to make it to the reunion.) Then there are also a few with whom I've stayed in contact over the years, like Dave Eikenbary, Donnie & Gary Willey, and Bill Woolsey, my longtime buddies whose friendship means so much to me.

In the 21st century, youth leadership is faced with even greater challenges than when we were growing up. Church has a lot of competition from other activities. Just instilling a desire for a life of faith, a life of sacrifice, and a love for Christ is more challenging than ever before.

But if my experience in Kansas City last week tells me anything, it is that investment in our youth - and today that goes right up through college age and beyond - is worth any sacrifice we can make. We must see these youth not where they are today but where they can be in the years to come . . . even 50 years down the road. No matter how hopeless the task may seem at times, God continues to work in the lives of young people. But we must be His voice, His hands, His feet, His heart, investing ourselves in their lives.

Baptist News Global/Associated Baptist Press: from painful birth to faithful service

Congratulations to David Wilkinson and Baptist News Global 's staff and Board of Directors as they celebrate the 25th anniversary of Associated Baptist Press in Nashville on Monday.

We Baptists must always be cognizant of the critical importance of a free and independent Baptist press. To be free and faithful Baptists, we must be informed Baptists.

It's important to remember the circumstances leading to the forming of Associated Baptist Press. The June 1990 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans was the culmination of a long battle, lasting for over a decade, for control of the Convention. The irony was that only one side wanted control.

One side wanted control, and the other side sought to cooperate. It takes two to cooperate but only one to control, so the inevitable happened . . . control won out.

Once they were firmly in control of the Convention's machinery, the next act of the Fundamentalists was almost just as inevitable. They took control of the press room. Baptist Press had long been the respected journalistic arm of the SBC . . . the arm but never the footman. Throughout the battle between Fundamentalists and Moderates, the top editors of Baptist Press - Al Shackleford and Dan Martin, and Wilmer C. Fields before them - had carried out their mission as journalists with integrity and courage, telling Baptists the truth , , , the facts . . . and letting the reader be the judge of just what all of it meant.

Unfortunately for the Fundamentalists, despite their 'victory,' the truth was too often uncomfortable for them, shining light on actions that were less than honest and less than Christian.

So, barely a month after solidifying their control, they fired Shackleford and Martin. The 25th anniversary of Associated Baptist Press is a proud one, one that we celebrate. But it follows, in short order, the 25th anniversary of the sad day that the SBC's Baptist Press became nothing more than a submissive (a word that has become even more dear to the SBC than 'inerrancy') house organ, repeating the party line fed to it by the SBC leadership.

Stan Hastey, in The Struggle for the Soul of the SBC: Moderate Responses to the Fundamentalist Movement (Mercer University Press, 1993), edited by Walter B. Shurden, tells the story of the founding of Associated Baptist Press. Hastey recounts the years of harrassment endured by Shackleford and Martin, as well as W. C. Fields, previous director of Baptist Press, at the hands of Fundamentalists.

Hastey writes that the SBC Executive Committee demanded, on the Tuesday following the June annual meeting in New Orleans, that Shackleford and Martin resign, but they refused. The firing that followed a few weeks later had become a mere formality. At Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on July 7, a group of Baptist editors met and "conceived Associated Baptist Press. This group, Hastey writes, consisted of "Bob S. Terry (editor of Missouri's Word and Way), Don McGregor (editor of Mississippi's Baptist Record), Julian Pentecost (editor of Virginia's Religious Herald), R. G. Puckett (editor of North Carolina's Biblical Recorder), Robert Allen (editor of Maryland/Delaware's Baptist True Union), E. Marvin Knox (editor of Kentucky's Western Recorder), and Jack Brymer (editor of the Florida Baptist Witness)."

That was where it began . . . faithful Baptist journalists who recognized that the old Baptist Press was gone and that a new, free and independent, Baptist news service was needed.

Thanks be to God, happy anniversary, and blessings on Baptist News Global - and your journalistic partners - as you continue to keep free and faithful Baptists informed.