Mainstream Alabama Baptists celebrated an “enduring legacy” during their annual meeting Nov. 16 at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, Montgomery.
About 35 people attended the dinner session, presided over by Mark Ray, president, and featuring keynote speaker Emmanuel McCall. Michael F. Thurman, pastor of Dexter Avenue Church, welcomed the group, noting Dexter Avenue’s role as the only church Martin Luther King Jr. led as pastor. King launched the Montgomery bus boycott from the church, creating his personal legacy in the civil rights movement.
Walter Nunn, past president of the state convention and pastor of Lakewood Baptist Church, Huntsville, eulogized the late Henlee Barnette for his influence as a Christian ethics professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and leader in race relations. Barnette died in October.
Stephen Black, Birmingham attorney, recalled the heritage of his grandfather, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who joined the majority opinion in Brown vs. Board of Education. Black said he had examined his grandfather’s papers at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., including letters written to him by Alabama Baptists who sought a meeting and explanation of his grandfather’s opinion. “What did he tell them?” Black said. “He didn’t write his opinion in spite of Baptists, but because of them.”
McCall, founding pastor of Christian Fellowship Baptist Church in Atlanta and former professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley, Calif., and Southern Seminary in Louisville, Ky., addressed the enduring legacy of the gospel.
He pointed out that Baptists historically have “not been ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We proclaim it loudly. Sometimes we yell it.”
Baptists also have “proclaimed the supremacy of the authority of what we called the Word,” according to McCall, noting that the use of different translations or different perspectives on theories of inspiration have not diluted that heritage.
McCall said that Baptists also have a legacy of conviction that those who proclaim the Word need to adhere to the call of God on their lives. Quoting statistics from the Baptist World Alliance, McCall said there are more than 44 million Baptists around the world. “These people have been touched by proponents of preaching, applying the written Word by the power of the Holy Spirit as a testimony to what God has done.”
He called Baptists “masters at telling the story.”
Relating his recent counsel to his successor upon his upcoming retirement as pastor, McCall said he recommended ignoring the highly educated status of the congregation and keeping preaching to bare truth. “Tell the story. Tell it simple. Tell it plain.”
Part of the inheritance of Baptists is that, having learned how to tell the story, they also depend upon others “to tell it again their way,” according to McCall, who called it “more believable” coming from a layperson.
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