On Feb. 23, a group of Samford University students gathered in a cemetery in Marion around an obelisk.
It had a familiar name on it — Harry, simply Harry, with no last name.
While at school, students see his name often — he’s the namesake of Harry’s Coffeehouse on Samford’s campus, and there’s a similar obelisk at Beeson Divinity School in his honor.
But they gathered that day in Marion to learn the story of the slave who lost his life saving students in Samford’s early days.
“One night in the 1850s, the building caught on fire, and Harry was roused out of bed and told to get out,” said Scott Guffin, executive director of Samford’s department of Christian ministry.
The building was one of the dormitories at Howard College, which started in Marion in the 1840s and later moved to Birmingham and changed its name to Samford. Harry was a 23-year-old slave, and he refused to leave the dorm until he’d woken up all the students.
He got them all out, but he died from burns and smoke inhalation.
“This young man, he saved their life at the cost of his own,” Guffin said. “Harry gave his life saving others from the flames — he showed the highest Christian character in that he considered his life nothing in comparison to saving the lives of others.”
Guffin said he feels like Samford’s Christian ministry students need to hear that story, and he makes sure each incoming class does through a day trip to Marion that he leads each year with Kevin Blackwell, executive director of Samford’s Ministry Training Institute, and now also Julia Higgins, assistant professor of Christian ministry.
“When we were preparing to launch the Christian ministry program here at Samford in fall of 2018, Andy Westmoreland (then president of Samford) had given the challenge to us to think about developing some type of meaningful ceremony to commemorate the induction of the students into our program on an annual basis,” Guffin said.
Guffin and Blackwell put their heads together, and Blackwell suggested they revisit Samford’s roots in Marion.
‘Welcome home’
Now each year, the incoming Christian ministry class visits the first Howard College site, now home to Marion Military Institute. They also visit the historic Siloam Baptist Church, where the Alabama Baptist State Convention, the North American Mission Board, Judson College, Howard College and The Alabama Baptist were all founded.
And each year, John Nicholson, Siloam’s pastor, greets the students with, “Welcome home.”
They participate in leading Siloam’s worship service that day, and Nicholson gives them a challenge and tells them a story about a worn place in the wood in front of the church’s communion table.
“John told us that when he found the dip in the floor, he thought, ‘I need to get that fixed.’ But then it dawned on him that it had been worn out by pastors who had been there, preaching the gospel and inviting people to come to Christ every week,” Guffin said. “So instead of getting it fixed, he decided he would just add his part to it.”
Nicholson challenged the students to do the same thing in the place where God calls them.
“We may have students who go on to be pastors of megachurches, and we may have students who will minister in absolute obscurity and other than the people they interact with, no one else will ever know their name,” Guffin said. “What’s important is that we do what is signified by that spot in the floor and what John said — ‘I’m going to add to the spot.’
“Our efforts, as small as we might think they are, when combined with the efforts of others for the Kingdom, God will use that to make a dent in the darkness,” he said.
Harry’s story reminds them of what sacrifice looks like too, Guffin said.
“Paul says, ‘I count my own life worth nothing.’ We may very well be called literally to give our lives to save others from the flames but metaphorically, spiritually, every other way we are called to give our lives to save others from the flames,” he said. “We want them to connect with that so that when they come back and go to Harry’s Coffeehouse, they remember that his life was not his own, and the one place where he could’ve made his life his own, he chose the path of servitude, to go and give his life for others.”
Meaningful
Luke Long, a Samford student and ministry intern at Birmingham Metro Baptist Association, said the trip was meaningful for him.
“In the same way that the Israelites would make their pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the Passover and reflect on God’s faithfulness and provision, so we Christian ministry students had the opportunity to travel down to Marion and see how the Lord was working in the hearts of some faithful people nearly 200 years ago to create a college that might equip individuals well as the were moving into ministry,” he said.
The trip gave the group a “fresh and broadened perspective on the larger legacy” they’re carrying on as well as the “greater mission we are laboring for” and the “greater Church we are seeking to shepherd,” Long said.
“We were reminded that the Lord was working nearly 200 years ago, and He remains to be working within us to further His Kingdom,” he said. “There is no better word we could have received on the outset of our studies and ministry. To God be all the glory.”
For more information about Samford’s Christian ministry program, visit samford.edu/arts/christian-ministry.
Share with others: