As Rick Burgess stood in the perfect quiet surrounding his 2-year-old son Bronner’s grave on Father’s Day, he said he heard God whisper.
“Rick, I love you. But you aren’t the only one I love.”
It was a poignant message for Burgess, co-host of the popular radio program “The Rick & Bubba Show” and a member of Shades Mountain Baptist Church, Vestavia Hills, whose youngest son drowned in the family’s swimming pool in January.
At times in the midst of his grief, “I’d look at my wife and she’d look at me and I’d say, ‘I’m ready to go home (heaven),’” he said. “What kind of selfish comment is that?”
Burgess wants to see his son, but he learned that day in the cemetery that God wants him here to help keep as many people as possible from dying an eternal death.
So that’s what Burgess is about.
And that’s what he explained to the more than 2,000 people packed into First Baptist Church, Montgomery, during the Tuesday night session of the Alabama Baptist State Convention annual meeting Nov. 18.
“Alabama Baptist Convention, Rick Burgess — you have no excuse,” Burgess said. “What are you doing here? Why are you so apathetic? Why don’t you care that God’s children are perishing? What if you get to the judgment and He said, ‘I gave you 85 years of life, and what you accomplished I could’ve gotten done in 10 years.’?”
People waste time in a lot of different ways and for a lot of different reasons — none of which is valid, Burgess said. More than 90 percent of Christians have never shared their faith even one time, he said.
Why? It’s because of a lack of love for Christ, Burgess said. “Your apathetic, weak approach to the most important thing that has happened in the history of time is not impressive to the lost.”
Then when they see you knocked down by a tragedy like the one the Burgess family faced, they see you weak and crushed and say, “You aren’t doing any better than I am,” he said.
Some people have told him they wouldn’t have been able to respond the way his family did to tragedy. But Burgess said, “There’s nothing special about the Burgesses. You have access to the same power we do — you are just choosing not to use it.”
Many people are believers in Christ but not followers of Christ, he said. “Our problem in America is not that we don’t have good pastors … and it’s not that a bunch of guys with bad hair have deceived a bunch of people. It’s that we need more Bible-believing, John 14:6 followers of Jesus Christ.”
Burgess said if he asked the crowd who wants to be where God wants them to be, then he bet the “overwhelming majority of you would raise your hand and raise it proudly.”
“But if I asked, ‘Are you OK with God doing anything He has to to get you there?,’ many hands would go down.”
The same still small voice that came to Burgess at the cemetery came to him on the plane ride home when he got the call that Bronner was near death, he said.
“I said, ‘My son is dying — why?’ And God said, ‘I want them to be perplexed.’”
And the way Burgess and his family responded did perplex the masses.
More than a million watched — many through the YouTube video of the funeral — as he gave Bronner a eulogy that pointed everyone to the glory of God in the situation and his wife, Sherri, lifted her hand up in praise during the service.
The radio show also gave Burgess a big platform to share about Christ using Bronner’s story.
“We have seen people saved through his death,” Burgess said.
Tribulation and pain will hit and it’s important we be ready to show the world we have something they don’t, he said.
“Can we make a commitment tonight that we’re going to be followers of Christ, not just believers in Christ?”
That call to commitment brought a number of attendees to the altar, answering his plea for their salvation and challenge to get their life right with God.
“You need to get right so you can spend your time on things that glorify the Kingdom,” Burgess said.
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