About me
Born February 14, 1947 in Atlanta, GA
Grew up in Rome, Georgia, in the northwest corner of the state, due south of Chattanooga, TN. Education: East Rome High School - 1965 Wake Forest University - 1969 M.Div. - Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary - 1980 Ph.D. - Emory University - New Testament - 1986 Work: Part-time church organist positions Staff writer, Winston-Salem Journal-Sentinel Piano instructor, Wake Forest Residence hall staff, UNC-Greensboro Inner-city ministry, First Baptist Winston-Salem Part-time instructor, Dept. of Religion, Wake Forest Professor of New Testament - Lexington (Kentucky) Theological Seminary - 1987-1999 Associate Professor of Religion - Baylor University - 1999 - 2008 Ministry Associate - Calvary Baptist Church, Waco Texas - 2004 - 2008 Associate Pastor - First Baptist Church Decatur, Georgia - 2008 - 2015. Books: Prayer, Power and the Problem of Suffering: Mark 11:22-25 in the Context of Markan Theology. SBLDS 105. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988. Reading Mark: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the Second Gospel. Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2000. |
My story
My early years were lived on a farm in Floyd County, Georgia, where, as the oldest of three children, I had a lot of freedom to roam around, create, imagine, and boss around my brother Bryan (3 years younger) and my sister Doris (5 years younger).
Our parents met during WWII in Miami, FL, where our father was a radio operator for Pan American flying people and equipment back and forth over North Africa and our mother was a translator of French correspondence for the Bureau of Censorship. Although our father grew up Catholic in Brooklyn, NY, in Rome, Georgia we all went to the First Baptist Church---our maternal grandparents' church. Our father went into business with his father-in-law after the war manufacturing custom carpet. Our mother stayed home when we were small and began to teach Latin in the public high school when she discovered that otherwise it was not going to be taught at all. There was a spindly tree down the hill from our home on the farm where I used to go to talk to God. When I was 8 I responded to an invitation at an event for young girls (GAs in Baptist language) to become a missionary. Before long I began to get mail from the Foreign Mission Board congratulating me on my decision, which was pretty scary, considering that I had never been farther from home than my grandparents' house less than a mile from ours. But my mother assured me that I didn't have to be a missionary right away. Whew! I missed a lot of school with severe bronchitis and pneumonia most of my elementary school years, which was OK with me because I didn't care much for school and would rather read and build models at home than go to school anyway. We all studied piano and later organ when our new MInister of Music gave free lessons to anybody who could navigate a keyboard. And we played band instruments. When we left the farm to move closer to town our neighbors would come over and play their instruments with the three of us as well. This was way before video games and we weren't allowed even to read comic books, let alone watch television except with our parents (mostly Lawrence Welk). When I was 14 God called me to "full-time Christian service." That's what girls were called to. Boys were called to ministry. In my experience, other than foreign missions, the kinds of "full-time Christian service" open to females were music ministry and youth ministry. Education ministers were all men and children's ministry hadn't yet been invented as a professional option. I disliked the youth group when I was in it, and believing in a good God, I eliminated that option right away. That left music ministry, which was attractive because Kenneth Moyers, our Minister of Music, was a fun person who loved music and people. So I looked for a college where I could prepare for church music. Problem: of the three of us kids, I had the least natural talent for music, so I couldn't go to a school where one had to audition to major in music. At that time Wake Forest College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina had a music major in the B.A. degree and a faculty who took students where they were and taught us as much as they could. Besides, Wake Forest had a good academic reputation and was a nice long way from Rome, Georgia. I LOVED college. I can't remember a single course that I didn't like. Wake had an excellent faculty, an excellent library, and a tolerant music department. The problem was that the music faculty were so pleased to have majors that they never bothered to inform me that I didn't have the talent to make it as a church musician---or any kind of professional musician for that matter. Of course by that time I had taken both the required Bible courses and decided that I could not be a church musician or any kind of minister because I didn't believe the Bible any more. I was in college from fall 1965 through spring 1969. Civil rights movement, Vietnam war and, in the summer of 1969, the moon landing. After Wake Forest I wandered through a semester of a graduate program in music in Oklahoma, a couple of years with the women's pages of the Winston-Salem Journal-Sentinel, and a couple of years of course work on yet another graduate degree in music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Finally, to the relief of everyone, I gave up on professional music as a career path and took a part-time position with the First Baptist Church of Winston-Salem doing inner-city ministry. The six years (1972 - 78) were a joy. First Baptist was part of a consortium of churches that worked together to provide opportunities for people living in poverty in the urban center: the Lutherans had the pre-school, the Baptists shared ministry with school-age children and youth with the Episcopalians and we all worked together with senior citizens living in poverty. First Baptist had a free clinic staffed with interns from the WFU medical school (under supervision). The WMU provided refreshments for the waiting room and we treated patients in the Sunday School classrooms. But I was frustrated by the minimal effect that our tutoring program with elementary-school students had on their academic progress. Teachers would tell me that a child could not do specific reading and math tasks that I had observed the child doing correctly just the day before. I persuaded the MIssions Committee to hire an educational expert to come in and evaluate the program. After a week of observation the expert told me that we were doing everything right. My response was that we couldn't be doing everything right because it was not working. "Oh, that," she said. "The reason you can't help them improve their academic performance is that in school they are regarded as unable to learn, whereas here your tutors cheer for them and tell them they can do anything. Here they can; at school they can't. There's nothing you can do about that." This was not good news to me. So I decided to take drastic steps---I decided to pray about it. Recently a new family had been attending First Baptist: Charles and Betty Talbert and their two children. Charles had been my New Testament teacher at Wake Forest but I had not kept in touch. But I could tell that there was a difference between "the historical Jesus" he had taught us about in class and the "Jeezus" he was talking about now. Plus, he and Betty and some other people in the church started a prayer group that met in homes. There was some concern on the church staff as to what was going on in those meetings. It was the '70s and the charismatic movement had come to the east coast, working its way over from California where all things odd originated. So when the group invited me to pray with them, I decided to go. It changed my life. At the first meeting I attended one man thanked God for delivering him from his smoking habit. At the time I was smoking a pack and a half a day and had been for ten years. I heard a voice in my head say, "Wouldn't you like for me to do that for you?" I didn't know it was God's voice, but when I left the meeting I put my cigarettes on the dashboard of my car just to see what would happen. I never had another one. I knew that there really was Someone out there and that Someone was after me. So I started praying for the kids in the programs I was leading. I even started reading my Bible. We had this new pastor, Dan Griffin, who kept talking about how all of us needed to be reading our Bibles and praying. But I got nothing out of the reading and my prayers did not get above the ceiling. I went back to the group and complained that God was not on the job with respect to the kids I was praying for. Charles Talbert spoke into the silence that greeted my complaint and told me that my problem was that I didn't have a relationship with Christ. I left the meeting angry. The next day I was on the phone calling him to say, "What do I have to do?" Charles: "Get someone to pray with you." Me: "I'll be right over." Charles, "Wait, let me ask my wife." So that night I surrendered my life to Jesus, lock, stock, and barrel. Past, present, and future. The unhealthy relationship I had gotten myself into, my confusion about my vocation, my conflicts with my parents, the future of the kids I cared about. When I had surrendered everything, Betty and Charles told me to ask Jesus to baptize me with the Holy Spirit. I had no idea what that was, but figured I had nothing to lose, so I prayed that too. When I got up the next morning and walked out of my house, it was as though everything was new, including me. At that point I had been a Christian for 19 years and if anybody had ever said anything to me about "surrender," I had not heard it. And as for the Holy Spirit, the Baptist congregations to which I had belonged honored the Spirit as the inspirer of Scripture. Period. As a colleague of mine said much later, "Lots of Christians regard the Holy Spirit as a retired author." The rest of my story is about being guided and provided for by God. In 1977 First Baptist Winston-Salem ordained me to the ministry. In 1978 I entered Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary---that was before the fundamentalist takeover---graduating in 1980. After seminary I went to Emory University in Atlanta, where I earned a Ph.D. in New Testament in 1986, teaching part-time at Wake Forest while writing my dissertation on prayer in the Gospel of Mark. Through the years I have continued to rely on the spiritual guidance, prayers, and friendship of Dr. Betty W. Talbert and on the encouragement and professional guidance and assistance of Dr. Charles H. Talbert. My first full-time teaching position was at Lexington Theological Seminary in Lexington, Kentucky, where I taught New Testament and Greek for twelve years (1987- 99). I took a position in the Department of Religion at Baylor University in Waco, Texas in 1999 and taught there until 2008. I joined Calvary Baptist Church in Waco where Julie Pennington-Russell had been pastor for a year. I had never heard anyone preach with as much conviction, transparency and creativity. Calvary had a worship attendance of about 150 when I joined. When Julie left in 2007 the attendance was about 400. The church invited me to join the pastoral staff part-time to help out with neighborhood outreach. I loved working with that team: Julie as pastor, Randall Bradley leading music and worship, Jonathan Grant leading youth ministry, Kelly Shushok leading the small groups ministry and integrating newcomers, and Deb Fernandez leading the ministry with children. When Julie left Calvary in 2007 to take the pastorate at First Baptist Decatur, GA, I told her to call if she needed help. She called and in 2008 I left Baylor to lead spiritual formation and missions at FBC Decatur. We had some great years at First Baptist --- a historic church with a record of leadership in moderate Baptist life. When we had done about all we could with that congregation we left there in May of 2015. Julie wanted to take a break from pastoring and finish a book. At 68 I was ready to retire and write as well. God has always been faithful and I look forward to seeing what comes next. --------July 2015. |