Keven Newsome is a graduate student at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, pursuing a Master of Arts in Theology. He is the author of supernatural thriller

SBC Today: How did you get into writing Christian fiction?

Keven Newsome: Fifth grade was a pivotal year for me, and looking back I can see how God was shaping me that year. That was the year I began my formal training in music, which is my first degree. It was the year I first put a pencil to paper to write a story. And it was also the year I gave my life to Christ. All the elements of what God had in store for my life came together that year.

Writing itself has been a journey and a process for me. Back in that fifth grade year my first attempt at a story was fantasy fan fiction based off a popular video game . . . complete with King James English, because after all that’s how they spoke in the game. My attention span wouldn’t suffer it. I took to drawing my stories instead. By junior high drawing stories wasn’t enough any more. There was too much to tell. I would tell these stories to my friends, and at some point I decided to write them down.

High school was when I became serious about writing. I wrote several short stories and began an awful fantasy novel full of teen angst and anachronistic dialogue. But something was nagging me. How could I do this for God? I gave up on that novel and went to college, discouraged with the direction of my writing. Thanks to the influence of a growing number of speculative Christian writers, I realized how I could make the stories I wanted to write glorify God. That’s when I began in earnest . . . learning the craft and writing constantly.

SBC Today: Would it be accurate to describe the genre of your writing as dark supernatural/paranormal Christian fiction? If not, how would you describe it?

Keven Newsome: That would certainly describe my style of writing, though the genre varies depending on the project. My style is a very edgy, intense, realistic portrayal of events. I want to write about life in all its grit and emotion. I’ve been called a Christian Horror writer by some, and I’m not opposed to that. I don’t do the slasher/bloody stuff … but life is horror. When life is portrayed properly, it comes out rather dark. Take a look inside the emotional state of most people, and you’ll see quiet despair, secret depression, and some very scary thoughts. The difference between my writing and the writing of secular writers of a similar nature is that I know where the Light is . . . and I make sure the Light pierces the darkness of the lives of my characters. By doing so, I hope to make the Light pierce through the darkness within my readers.

SBC Today: Are other supernaturalist authors like Anne Rice or Frank Peretti a model for you in any way in your fiction?

Keven Newsome: Anne Rice, not so much. I don’t go for the vampire thing. When I write about the supernatural, I want to write about it as biblically accurate as possible. Frank Peretti was a huge influence on me. During those first couple of years of college when I was searching for an answer to how I could write this sort of thing for God, a friend told me to read This Present Darkness. It opened my eyes to what a Christian could do with the darker side of writing. I have Lewis, Tolkien, and Robin McKinley to thank for my first love of fantasy, which I’m now getting a chance to return to. From a secular standpoint, Edgar Allen Poe was a big influence and some of the more psychological stuff from Stephen King. However, at this point in my career I’m learning to lean less on the influence of other authors and to develop my own unique style and voice. What you read from me won’t be like anything you’ve read from other authors. My publisher accuses me of not playing by the rules, and I’d like to keep it that way.

SBC Today: Describe Winter and your other writings that are available to the public.

Keven Newsome: Winter is the story of Winter Maessen, a Goth girl who is a new Christian. As she begins her freshman year of college she discovers she has the gift of prophecy. The story is told with two timelines. In the primary story, we see her adjusting to a new life in Christ and trying to figure out what her gift means. Her dark past and prophetic gift makes her uniquely qualified to take on a Satanic priest. In the secondary story, we see her first year of high school as she deals with the slow death of her mother and learning to live with her estranged father. Here we see her decline into the Goth subculture and experimentation with witchcraft. At the heart of Winter is the theme that no life is too broken to be used by God. All he requires is a willing vessel, not a perfect vessel.

Aquasynthesis is a short story anthology put together by my publisher. Within it I have three stories, one of which is a “deleted scene” from Winter. I also assisted with the narration story and my wife designed the cover.

Beginning January 2012, my novel Among Dragons will be serialized with monthly installments in Digital Dragon Magazine, after which they plan to publish it through their parent publishing arm. This is a fantasy story about a world plagued by dragons and two armies bent on mutual annihilation. The Creator gives a warning of fiery destruction. He sends three friends on impossible journeys to spread the warning and the message of the one hope to escape.

You can also find weekly(ish) articles on my website, ranging from life experiences to writing experiences to my theological research. www.KevenNewsome.com. Mind the E’s. And coming soon to YouTube . . . vlogging.

SBC Today: What additional book projects would you like to write?

Keven Newsome: My “to write” list is quite long. I think I have enough projects to keep me busy for at least the next twenty years, and that’s only if I don’t add to the list. In the next five or so years you can expect a few specific things from me.

Winter is a four book series. The second one is already written and in revision. We’re looking at an October 2012 release for it. The following two Winter books should come out in one and a half year increments after that . . . unless I get more time, God blesses me to be able to write full time, and/or my fans start beating down my door after the second book.

Among Dragons will be serialized starting January 2012 and will probably run in monthly installments for about two years. After that it will get a print release, maybe in 2014. Until then, though, you can catch each “episode” monthly at www.digitaldragonmagazine.net.

I also have a “secret project” I want to write, which is outlined and just begging for my attention. I’m very excited about it, as is most everyone I’ve pitched it to. At some point during all the other projects I’ve got, I want to write it too. Sooner rather than later. Look for it before the Winter series concludes.

That’s certainly enough projects to keep me very busy for at least five years. Beyond that, I’m not sure what I’ll work on. I’ll go to my list and see what shouts for my attention the loudest. I’d really like to do some sort of space/sci fi Christian horror. That idea has been marinating for a couple of months. Perhaps that’ll be next.

SBC Today: What are you trying to accomplish in writing Christian fiction? Do you attempt to embed a Christian message in it? Are you attempting to inform, inspire, entertain, or something else?

Keven Newsome: First and foremost, I want to write stories that God would be pleased with. Which means I want to be a good writer, excelling in the craft. Everything I write has a message in it. I have an entire approach to writing that’s built around developing the “take away” value of the story. But what I don’t want to do is cleverly disguise a sermon as fiction. That’s bad writing. Good writing doesn’t have to do that. Good writing can tell the story of a person in such a way that the message is portrayed rather than dumped into the text. Everything I write should also entertain the reader. Boring certainly isn’t a characteristic of good writing. With Winter I hope the reader will be inspired that God can use even them to do great things. But overall, I want to strive for excellence in this craft. Yes, I’m a Christian writer . . . but I don’t want to be a good Christian writer by just Christian writer standards. I want to be an excellent writer by anyone’s standards. I want a non-Christian to pick up one of my books and feel comfortable reading because it’s a good book, and maybe God will use the story to speak to them. Cleverly disguised sermons in Christian fiction are not as cleverly disguised as some might hope. Non-Christians see right through it and put the book down. It’s bad writing. Authors who do this wind up preaching to the choir. I don’t want to be that. I want to honor God with the very best and I want it to appeal to the largest audience.

SBC Today: Your recent book Winter deals with prophecy. How do you understand the New Testament teachings about the gift of prophecy?

Keven Newsome: The biggest thing people miss is that there is a difference between the gift of prophecy and being a prophet. I think the gift of prophecy is alive and well in every Christian church in the world. Prophecy happens from the pulpit every Sunday and most people don’t even realize it. How many times do people come up to their preachers and say something like, “How did you know what I was going through?” or, “That’s exactly what I needed to hear.” or, “I felt like you were preaching just to me.” That’s prophecy . . . speaking words of truth directly to someone without having the full knowledge of the truth behind the words. It’s God speaking through you to someone else. I don’t buy into all the future telling worldly definition of prophecy. That’s not strictly biblical. Sure there’s some instances of that, but it’s more the exception than the rule.

But what I’ve done in Winter is take an Old Testament view of prophecy. It’s more than just a spiritual gift, it’s an office. Old Testament prophets performed miracles, led armies, challenged kings, protected people, and delivered messages. I wanted to write a story that would show what an Old Testament prophet might look like today. I say that Winter has the gift of prophecy because it’s easy for the average person to understand. But she really is an Old Testament style prophetess. By the end of the four books she will become as great of a prophet as Elijah.

Perhaps you’ve seen the hole in this? Yes, the Bible tells us that Old Testament style prophets won’t return until the last days. You can rest assured that by the last Winter book there will be eschatological implications.

SBC Today: Who are your favorite authors and/or books?

Keven Newsome: My favorite books list includes Lord of the Rings, by Tolkien; Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by Lewis; Thr3e, by Dekker; This Present Darkness, by Peretti; Red, by Dekker; The Visitation, by Peretti; The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley; Perelandra, by Lewis; Harry Potter; and Alpha Redemption, by my friend P.A. Baines. Favorite authors whose books didn’t make my top ten list would be: Robert Liperulo, Edgar Allen Poe, Ursula K. LeGuin, Michael Crichton, and my friends Kerry Neitz, Diane M. Graham, and Kat Heckenbach.

SBC Today: What is your favorite book of the Bible? Why?

Keven Newsome: It’s really difficult to pick a “favorite” book of the Bible. Every book is a favorite for different reasons. But if I had to pick one book that I enjoy reading and studying the most, it would have to be Genesis. Being a story teller I’m partial to narrative passages. In fact, my favorite preaching style is to take an instructional passage from the New Testament and pair it with a narrative passage from the Old Testament as a running illustration. It plays to my strength of teaching through story. There are so many rich stories full of insight in Genesis. I’ve taught through that book several times and each time I learn something new. I think it’s fascinating to see how people interacted with God before formal religion came into the picture. I like to think this is the way God would prefer it, but humans need religious structure so we don’t get distracted. The Garden of Eden presents to me a picture of what the New Jerusalem might be like, so it gives me something to look forward to. Genesis chapter 6 is so rich (and controversial) that I never tire of digging into the implications of what life might have been like at that time. I’ve even developed a couple of book ideas from it. There are aspects about God that you learn only in Genesis, and the entire gospel message can be seen woven within the lives of the patriarchs. It’s an amazingly rich book that I feel doesn’t get enough attention.

SBC Today: How does writing fiction fit into your sense of calling?  What other things are you doing in Kingdom service?

Keven Newsome: In a big way writing is to me an offering to God. I think writing is the closest a person can get to imitating God. Jesus often told stories to teach people about God and life. In the same way I want my stories to be a portrait of life as it truly is, and in the process I want to reveal to them who God truly is. God is also the Creator of the universe. His creations are not only functional and not only reveal His character, but they’re beautiful to enjoy. He created this world as much for our pleasure as His. Through writing I have the opportunity to shape worlds and create beauty. Using words I can create something wonderful and enjoyable in the mind of my reader. It’s the closest I can come to trying to imitate my Father, and hopefully through my efforts I can point others to see the true beauty and awesomeness of the real Creator. I can’t make a tree, but maybe the way I paint the description of a tree with words can make you have a whole new appreciation for the real thing. So writing is my offering . . . my sacrifice to God first. I want it to be the very best it can be, and I want to draw others to God at the same time.

Other than writing, I am currently serving as Associate Pastor at Lakeside Baptist Church in Metairie, LA. It’s not exactly a position I ever saw myself doing, but I don’t feel it’s my place to refuse God with anything. I have never, and still don’t, feel a calling to be a pastor. But as associate pastor I get to assist the pastor in ministry, and I get opportunities to preach.

I am also working on a Master of Arts in Theology at the New Orleans Baptist Seminary with a “transcript double” in Biblical Studies, after which I plan to pursue PhD work. I am much more comfortable in a teaching role than a pastoring role, so my work preparing to be a teacher is very important to me. In my research I am studying Supernatural Theology. This is a unique specialization that focuses on all things where the supernatural is supposed to have interacted with the natural. The areas of this include angelology and demonology, afterlife, special knowledge, miracles, and cults. Not only does this specialization play into my writing career, but I feel like it is one of the most neglected areas of study for Christians. Our beliefs are very supernatural beliefs. The Bible is a very supernatural book. And our society is obsessed with all things supernatural. You can’t find a single television station that doesn’t have at least one supernatural themed program. But for some reason, we neglect studying supernatural things. The world is seeking answers and we’re not giving them anything adequate. We’re so quick to throw the “demon card” at everything, that the world has dismissed our opinions completely. We’re wrong for that. We need to spend some quality time studying the supernatural and providing truth seekers with sound Biblical answers. That’s what I doing with my research.

Dr. Jerry Vines served as Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida for 23 years, and was previous Pastor of Dauphin Way Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama. He has served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention, and now continues to minister through Jerry Vines Ministries. He is known as one of the best expository preachers in America, and is co-author with Jim Shaddix of Power in the Pulpit: How to Prepare and Deliver Expository Sermons.

SBC Today: What do you think are the greatest challenges confronting the SBC?

Jerry Vines: Theologically, will the issue of Calvinism create further division in the SBC. I have been a SBC preacher over 50 years. I have worked quite well with my Calvinist friends, many of whom I invited to preach for me. I have no desire to run all Calvinists out of the SBC; I think it would be divisive and wrong. But, current attempts to move the SBC to a Calvinistic soteriology are divisive and wrong. As long as groups and individuals seek to force Calvinism upon others in the Convention, there will be problems. There is a form of Calvinism that is militant, hostile and aggressive that I strongly oppose. I have stated before, so it’s not new news, that should the SBC move toward five-point Calvinism it will be a move away from, not toward, the gospel. I agree with Dr. David Allen’s assessments at the end of his chapter on Limited Atonement in the book Whosoever Will.

Methodologically, will the SBC try to be like the world to reach the world, or realize the church has the most influence on the world when it is least like the world. I am just astonished and saddened at the Howard Stern approach I am seeing in some of our churches. Holiness and separation seem to be missing in many of our churches.

Denominationally, will the SBC return to the societal method of supporting its work or continue to work together cooperatively to do together what we cannot do separately.

SBC Today: What do you see as the greatest opportunities open to the SBC?

Jerry Vines: Preparing to reach the nations that are literally coming to our doorstep, utilizing the breathtaking advances in technology that allow us to touch the world with the gospel, and responding to the willingness of thousands of our committed young people who want to go to the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. I do not believe we will fulfill Matthew 24:14 in our age. That will be done during the Great Tribulation. But, we should certainly try to lessen the workload of the 144,000!

SBC Today: What are your thoughts about a possible SBC name change?

Jerry Vines: I’m not heated up about it. I do think it is part of an overall desire on the part of some to change everything that is connected with what Southern Baptists have been. I’m  not convinced it is the detriment to reaching the lost some think it is. My ministry has been limited in its location. But, in 50+ years of trying to win the lost I never witnessed by including the fact I was a Southern Baptist. It was just not germane to the task at hand. Nor have I ever had anyone I witnessed to ask me if I was a Southern Baptist. That may happen in other parts of America or the world. I just am not into all of the marketing/branding stuff, I guess. But, if you look at it that way, Southern Baptist is a brand known worldwide for its belief in the Bible, evangelistic thrust, and mission outreach. I think the view that people identify it with slavery and racism is pretty well worn out.

SBC Today: How do you go about sermon preparation?

Jerry Vines: That’s a question that requires a book response! I describe my sermon preparation in detail in the book Power in the Pulpit: How to Prepare and Deliver Expository Sermons.

SBC Today: What is your evaluation of contemporary preaching?

Jerry Vines: It’s a mixed bag. Those who denigrate exposition think they are smarter and more creative than God, I guess. That’s why there is a lot of silly stuff and some crude, unseemly stuff coming from some of our pulpits. But, on the other hand, I am thankful for the large number of young pastors who are giving themselves to book-by-book exposition of the Scriptures.

SBC Today: What is the key to being a faithful/effective/successful pastor?

Jerry Vines: I think it is maintaining a daily walk with God that stems from the quiet time, daily devotions or whatever you want to call: the time when you read the Bible and let God talk to you and pray and you talk to God. Don’t start your day without it.

SBC Today: What is one key mistake that you see pastors and/or church staff members making that causes them problems in their churches?

Jerry Vines: Trying to change everything at once. I plead guilty to that when I was young pastor. In one of my churches I changed so much, one old wag said I’d changed everything in the church except the signs on the bathroom doors! I could have used a little more wisdom. And common sense.

The pastor/staff member would be wise to prayerfully, carefully and slowly look at everything the church is or isn’t doing. Some things may need to be changed. But, you probably won’t know that for several months. If there is a fence and you don’t know its purpose, don’t just assume there isn’t one and tear it down. Find out what the fence is intended to accomplish. You might see it needs to stay.

SBC Today: Who are two or three of your “heroes in ministry”?

Jerry Vines: Some of my heroes are in heaven. W. A. Criswell; Adrian Rogers; Jerry Falwell; John Phillips. I look upon Billy Graham, Warren Wiersbe and O.S. Hawkins as heroes in the ministry to me. I have looked up to these men all of my life.

SBC Today: What is the toughest lesson you have learned in ministry?

Jerry Vines: There are so many it is hard to narrow it down to one! I guess this: things are never as good as you think they are; and they are never as bad as you think they are. Oh yes, and I learned early that I’m not God; I’m not even Assistant God.

SBC Today: What are the most significant doctrinal issues that the church will struggle with over the next few decades?

Jerry Vines: Whether or not the church will be guided by a biblical theology or a manmade theology. Baptists should be neither Calvinists nor Arminians. They should strive to be biblicists. I refuse any man-centered labels. I want to be known as a simple Bible believer, trying my best to believe, teach and live what the Bible says. As Southern Baptists, we must come together, not as Calvinists nor non-Calvinists, but as Baptists committed to obeying the Great Commission in a revival of evangelism and missions.

SBC Today: What do you do for fun?

Jerry Vines: Watch college football, especially the Alabama Crimson Tide. Make fun of my stuffy preacher buddies. Pick at my hero, O. S.

SBC Today: Anything else you would like to tell us about?

Jerry Vines: Yes. I am finding great joy in serving Jesus in my fourth quarter ministry. I have all of the pleasure and none of the pain. I am so happy I feel guilty I’m not unhappy more often! I enjoyed my 50 years as a pastor. But, I’m enjoying preaching all over the country, writing, counseling pastors and just fellowshipping with Jesus. Remember, in our fourth quarter, the game is already won, we are just putting points on the board, running up the score!

Note to our readers: Dr. Vines welcomes your comments, but does not plan to participate in the comment thread.

Dr. Hayes Wicker, has been in ministry for over 41 years and has served as senior pastor at First Baptist Church, Naples, Florida since 1992.  He earned a B.A degree from Grand Canyon University and the M.Div. and D.Min. degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has served as President of the Florida Baptist Convention.

SBC Today: What do you think are the greatest challenges confronting the SBC?

Hayes Wicker: We are dealing with what appears to be a “generation gorge” and not just a “gap.” Those who are younger and who tend to be more innovative must respect those who are proven leaders, while older traditionalists must honor those who love Jesus even though they may adopt different approaches to sharing the gospel.

Denominations tend to become institutionalized, then fossilized and no longer a dynamic, organic Body. Bureaucracy must not replace the local church. At the same time, we must be cooperative and recognize that we still have the most workable denomination in history. Leaders at all levels must not lose touch with the local church, listening to local ministers of churches of all sizes.

We need genuine revival and repentance. We must seek brokenness as we humble ourselves before the Lord, admitting our pride and tendency toward self-sufficiency. Prayer must become a new priority.

As I was meditating on God’s unique message to pastors in 2 Timothy this morning, the Lord seemed to apply these principles to the SBC:

• We need a new sense of urgency concerning “the last days,” realizing that we must swim against the current of the world (2 Timothy 3:1-5) and return to teaching eschatology.
• We must not in any way dilute “the Word of Truth” (2 Timothy 2:15) but “guard God’s treasure” of doctrinal truth and “sound doctrine” (2 Timothy 1:14; 4:3).
• We should resist being “entangled” in the current world system (2 Timothy 2:4).
• Local church pastors must recover preaching and teaching of the Word of God, not seeing this as old fashioned or irrelevant. There must be recommitment to expository preaching which takes seriously God’s inspired Word (2 Timothy 3:16, 17), seeing each text as a wellspring and not a springboard.
• Pastors and church leaders must toughen up and man up as we “endure hardship” (2 Timothy 4:5). We are called to be warriors, not wimps. Things will get worse.
• Each of us need to “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Timothy 4:5). I am deeply concerned that we are losing the emphasis on personal evangelism and the training and reproduction of soul-winners. The Pastor must set the pace as a personal evangelist.

SBC Today: What do you see as the greatest opportunities opening to the SBC?

Hayes Wicker: We have great opportunities in the current national and international climate to offer hope to the hopeless, to shine as spiritual lighthouses in a stormy world and brilliant diamonds against dark velvet. Southern Baptists can bring a balanced perspective to the moral and ethical issues of the day if we are willing to confront cultural evil, be courageous in our pulpits, and prudent and wise when approaching sensitive political issues. People are crying out for authentic voices of authority.

I am excited about the forward-thinking, missional leadership in our Convention, as we give new impetus to church-planting here and abroad. God is mightily bringing thousands to Himself in the 10/40 Window. We need more missionaries and better funding, but I am thrilled that we have a younger generation who are willing to sacrifice for the sake of the kingdom. They are not as status-driven and things-oriented as my boomer bunch.

We also have tremendous opportunities to offer diverse kinds of ministries in our churches, which meet various needs of people when built on a solid, biblical foundation. Americans and Europeans are particularly facing up to the emptiness of political hype and seeing the dead-end of the “American dream.”

SBC Today: What are your thoughts about a possible SBC name change?

Hayes Wicker: Since I have ministered outside “the Bible Belt” most of my ministry, I see a name change as a positive step. We are definitely in a secular culture here in Naples, Florida, with most of our people coming from the north.  I sometimes humorously hope that we will not erect a tombstone, with a convention named “The Gone South Baptist Convention!”

Our Study Committee has some of the brightest and most creative minds in the country. But the name is only a label and a brand unless there is substance and a consistent testimony. Thousands of “Yankees” come to our First Baptist Church because of God’s work here.

SBC Today: What are some great things that are happening in your church?

Hayes Wicker: We have made great strides in continual growth over the years of our Bible Study program, our discipleship groups, our worship attendance, and our ministries. God has allowed us to grow from less than a thousand members in 1992 to right under 9,000 currently and to see an increase in worship from around 400 to over 4,000 during “Season.” We have seen gradual but steady growth in our “Bible & Life Groups” from around 400 to well over 2,000. Our people are discovering that the church shrinks when they get involved in a shepherding group and discover their own unique ministry. We have seen over a hundred ministries develop and flourish, allowing people to hear from God and discover their own niche. I have never seen a sweeter spirit of unity than in our church.

A Christian school, which encompasses kindergarten through high school, has experienced remarkable growth and continues to be a vital arm of our church. We thank God that our second phase building expansion of $30 million has been whittled down to around $8 million, with people sacrificially giving even during the recession in one of the hardest hit areas of the nation.

SBC Today: What is the key to being a faithful/effective/successful pastor?

Hayes Wicker: A pastor of a local church must absolutely do four things. He must live a godly life, faithfully preach the Word of God, lead the congregation, and care for his people. No matter how well he may counsel, administrate, or visit hospitals, he may be faithful but not truly successful in building a New Testament church.

God’s pastor must balance priorities of home, personal life, and ministry. I have always felt that growing the church but losing my children or wife is too high of a price and one that I am not willing to pay. One of my greatest joys, after 41 years of pastoring, is how my children are walking with the Lord and still love His church and ministry and their parents.

I am a firm believer that every pastor must be filled with the Holy Spirit and also experience God’s unique anointing on his ministry, that special touch which empowers him to bear much fruit. This is the key to doing the other important things.

SBC Today: What is one key mistake that you see pastors and/or church staff members making that causes them problems in their churches?

Hayes Wicker: I have made mistakes over the years and am continuing to learn. I can certainly say that I have “blown it” by ignoring at times that “still small voice” that warned me about the calling of certain staff members. We tend to believe the best about people and sometimes have difficulty getting honest references from previous ministries and genuine feedback in the church.

Always looking for “greener grass” and not shepherding in the pasture where God has put you will lead to discontent and erosion. If this happens, pastors or staff members will begin to look for reasons to leave rather than to stay. This is more than just “one key mistake.”

SBC Today: What were your earliest opportunities for preaching?

Hayes Wicker: I was called to vocational ministry the same night that I believed in Christ for salvation. I preached in my church in Phoenix and in rest homes, jails, and the Salvation Army. God opened the door for youth revivals, banquets, and retreats even while I was still a high school student. I was greatly blessed to pastor my first church as a junior and senior in college.

When I went to Southwestern Seminary, no doors opened that first year for a staff position. God laid it on my heart to begin a drive-in theater ministry of weekend evangelism. For a 1 ½ years I related movies to the gospel and gave an invitation in between double features at the Southside Twin Drive-in. A number of guys were mad at me for interrupting their dates in the cars, but God protected me and used the unsaved manager and owner to defend me. Jesus is Lord!

SBC Today: Who are two or three of your “heroes in ministry?”

Hayes Wicker: Dr. T. W. Hunt has been my great model of a godly prayer warrior who faithfully intercedes for us daily. Dr. Roy Fish taught and modeled empowered evangelism and has greatly encouraged me. Dr. Adrian Rogers represented the total balance on a 10-talent pastor/leader/preacher. I have benefited greatly from the wise counsel, compassionate shepherding, and ministry-modeling of Dr. Jimmy Draper and Dr. Jim Henry. Dr. Ron Dunn modeled creative, expository preaching in a unique way for me in my early years. Dr. Paige Patterson has exemplified courageous conviction and believed in me even in tough times.

SBC Today: What is the toughest lesson you have learned in ministry?

Hayes Wicker: I have learned to try to balance aggressive, visionary leadership with patient waiting on the Lord’s timing. I have also learned the hard way that I must seek wise counsel from those who not only walk with the Lord but who know the situation best. I have learned that God’s “grace is sufficient” when I live within the sphere of His calling, not trying to overextend or underachieve.

SBC Today: What is your approach to preaching?

Hayes Wicker: I always seek to be an expository preacher, taking seriously the text, doing thorough exegesis, and giving a full explanation of all of the truths in a passage of Scripture. I preach through books of the Bible and also teach thematic subjects. For instance, in recent months I preached about 25 themes in the book of Proverbs, then each week on one of the Ten Commandments, and then key biblical passages in Eschatology. The series that I am currently involved in is entitled “A Tour Guide Through the End Times.” I will begin soon a verse-by-verse series through 1, 2, and 3 John, entitled “Being the Real Deal.”

On short prayer and study retreats I plan upcoming sermon series. I create a file folder for each message after determining the key themes. I seek to outline the passage of Scripture and collect illustrations and thoughts weeks in advance.

I dictate each message, which is typed by my wonderful administrative assistant in manuscript form. I learn that and deliver it with an extemporaneous approach. But “all is vain unless the Spirit of the Holy One comes down.”

SBC Today: How do you help your congregation focus on missions?

Hayes Wicker: We continue to focus on a variety of mission opportunities, calling our people to give, to go, and to pray. We significantly support the Cooperative Program in our budget giving and have numerous partnerships with other missionaries. We encourage every member to go on a mission trip at some point and usually have one to two teams out on the foreign field each month.

We highlight the mission trips by commissioning each team before they leave and also feature each week in our Mission’s Kiosk a different partner. We have resident missionaries living in mission homes. We created the Great Commission Connection two years ago, which involves hundreds of our people praying for and interfacing with International Mission Board missionaries, those with the North American Mission Board, the Florida Baptist Convention, and all of our seminaries. We have also created a special funding approach to supplement our Cooperative Program giving. We are prayerfully seeking to discover how we can best adopt more people groups, having already been involved in unique ways with the Pushtun people in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

SBC Today: What are some of the  most effective means of outreach at your church?

Hayes Wicker: We have seen God greatly bless our Discovery Dinners, which, on a quarterly basis, we use to bring prospects and new members for an evening together. I teach about our philosophy of ministry, present the gospel, and share about doctrine, missions, and stewardship. My Associate Pastor and I have found this incredibly effective for years and average 40-50% of decisions in any size group. We also see great effectiveness in a Pastor’s Reception time following the Worship services where people can come to me to make decisions for Christ or to pray with pastors and staff. We still are involved in Witnessing Training and visitation, even in what is primarily a gated community. We are seeking to train soul-winners and to personally confront people with the gospel. Most importantly, we encourage our people to share Christ in the normal traffic patterns of their lives.

SBC Today: What are the most significant doctrinal issues that the church will struggle with over the next few decades?

Hayes Wicker: As the church has struggled for centuries with these issues, we will continue to debate issues of reformed theology and Calvinism. We must continue to focus on biblical theology rather than man-oriented commentary. Charismatic extremes are also still very much an issue on the mission fields. We will struggle with a correct definition of “the gospel” and how we can faithfully present truth even though we might offend those who seek to be seeker-driven. We dare not water down the issues of sin, lostness, and the cross.

SBC Today:  How do you balance ministry and family responsibilities?

Hayes Wicker: I have sought to balance ministry and family responsibilities by giving my children total access to my study, by spending date nights with my wife, and calendaring time with my family. At times I tend to be out of balance with workaholic tendencies. I have a very patient and loving wife, who is as called to ministry as I am. I thank the Lord that all of my children are involved in ministry to some extent. Whenever I am in the country I call my wife daily. We also believe in the importance of eating meals together.

SBC Today: What do you do for fun?

Hayes Wicker: I love to play golf. I am blessed to be in what is often called “the golf capital.” I thoroughly enjoy doing anything with my wife and find my grandchildren to be the funniest people on the planet. I enjoy reading history “for fun,” plus walking on our beaches.

SBC Today: What are your two or three favorite TV shows? Movies?

Hayes Wicker: I prefer to watch football and basketball on TV, as well as the History Channel, and FOX News. I have always loved good Western movies and films that have an inspirational theme such as “Amazing Grace,” “Chariots of Fire,” and most recently, “War Horse.” Anything that is set in historical context I find interesting. I must confess a long attraction to action-adventure films like “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

SBC Today:  Thanks, Hayes. We knew you in those early days when you were being faithful in smaller opportunities that had no acclaim – the youth detention center and the drive-in theater. We are confident that because you were faithful in these “little” things, God has given you the great opportunities for ministry that God has given you.

Dr. Rummage is the Senior Pastor of Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon, Florida. He earned a Ph.D. in Preaching from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He has been a faculty member at both New Orleans Seminary and Southeastern Seminary. He co-authored Planning Your Preaching and Praying with Purpose with his wife Michele, and co-authored Engaging Exposition with Danny Akin and Bill Curtis. He also hosts a daily Bible teaching ministry that airs nationally on Sirius/XM radio.

SBC Today: What do you think are the greatest challenges and opportunities for the SBC?
Stephen Rummage: Our greatest challenge is that we continue to lose ground to the lostness that pervades our communities, our nation, and our world. I am very thankful that Southern Baptists have established where we stand on issues like the inerrancy of Scripture, the exclusivity of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, and the need for confrontational evangelism. These theological commitments must translate into practice in our collective work as a Convention to reach lost people for Christ. Otherwise, people all around us are just going to keep going to Hell while we congratulate ourselves on how orthodox we are. We have an incredible opportunity in this generation to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. I don’t want to fail in meeting that opportunity.

SBC Today: What are your thoughts about a possible SBC name change?
Stephen Rummage: I place a high degree of trust in the people that Dr. Wright named to the task force to study the possibility of changing our name. I guess I’m like a lot of other people in that I have a kind of emotional attachment to our current name. However, I can understand the rationale for a name change, especially with respect to the first and last parts of our name. “Southern” fails to communicate adequately our actual reach and constituency. “Convention” seems antiquated. Being known as “Baptist,” however, is a non-negotiable as far as I’m concerned, because the word speaks of our theology and identity.

SBC Today: What is the key to being a faithful/effective/successful pastor?
Stephen Rummage: I believe that success as a pastor is found only by bringing pleasure to God. After all, He saved me. He called me. He gifted me. He placed me where I am serving. So, if I please Him, I have been effective and successful. His pleasure is the only true measure of my success. For that reason, my personal walk with God is first and foremost in my life and ministry.

SBC Today: What is one key mistake that you see pastors and/or church staff members making that causes them problems in their churches?
Stephen Rummage: The mistake I think ministers make most often is being impatient. Impatience can cause us to push for change when either the church is not ready or when we have not been at the church long enough to bring about the change. Impatience can also cause us to give up on a vision that God has given us or to exit prematurely from a place where God has called us. Since the fruit of the Spirit includes patience (Galatians 5:22), impatience must be a work of the flesh!

SBC Today: Who are two or three of your “heroes in ministry”?
Stephen Rummage: I have a lot of heroes. It’s hard just to name two or three. Dr. Adrian Rogers will always be a hero of the pulpit for me. In every regard – his delivery, the Christ-centered theology of his messages, his absolute dependence on Scripture, his warm-heartedness, his masterful use of language, his undaunted courage to stand for unpopular truths – I find his preaching to be exemplary. Dr. Jerry Vines is also a great hero. He has been one of my biggest influences in terms of how I outline and seek to explain the text. I read his books on sermon preparation and delivery during my first pastorate, thought to myself, “I want to do it like he does it,” and tried my best to follow his example. Dr. Paige Patterson – who was my boss for six years when I served on the faculty of Southeastern Seminary – has also been very influential. I watched him do two things that I try to remember: First, he hired people he trusted. Second, he trusted the people he hired. That sounds simple, but it can be pretty hard to do, and it makes a huge difference when you do it.

SBC Today: What is the toughest lesson you have learned in ministry?
Stephen Rummage: Learning to say, “no” to people. I like people to like me, and there’s always the temptation to say, “yes,” in order to appease or to gain approval. However, I’ve regretted saying “yes” enough that I don’t say it as easily anymore. I never want to say “no” to Jesus, but I often need to say “no” to church members – and staff members!

SBC Today: What is your approach to preaching?
Stephen Rummage: I’m an expositional preacher, so the beginning place for me is always the text of Scripture itself. I usually begin by diagramming the text to find its structure. Then, I make observations of the text, verse by verse, followed by asking questions about the word meanings, flow of thought, context, history, theological themes, and other issues. Next, I answer my questions by using the various tools in my library.

After I’ve wrestled with the text, I’m ready to identify the main idea of the passage. I work really hard to write a simple sentence that expresses the essence of the text. That sentence becomes the heart of my sermon. I outline the text with points that take me through the text’s structure and connect back to the main idea. I make sure those points are applicational in nature.

Next, I flesh out the message using explanation, illustration, and application for each point. I add an introduction that gets attention and directs the listener’s interest to the subject of my message and create a conclusion that calls for a faith response. Finally, I work hard to internalize the message so that I can preach it with minimal (preferably no) notes, which creates greater communication and rapport with the listener when I preach. All along the way, I’m praying for the anointing of the Holy Spirit and His insight so that He can use me to bring a life-changing word to those who hear.

SBC Today: How do you help your congregation focus on missions?
Stephen Rummage: For missions, Bell Shoals does an annual Global Outreach Celebration that usually brings in 30 or 40 missionary families from all over the world. The missionaries meet with our congregation and staff in small group settings and share what God is doing on the mission field. That approach has created a vibrant atmosphere of missions giving and involvement in our congregation. Last year, nearly 1,100 of our members were involved in some type of hands-on mission endeavor, including hundreds who took short-term mission journeys overseas. Nearly every week, we commission an outgoing mission team in our worship services.

Last year, we began a program that we call “Go Term,” which is designed to encourage and equip students to take a more extended mission journey – from three to nine months – either before, during, or after their college career. Our goal is to make doing this a normal part of the spiritual DNA for families in our church. When we do parent/infant dedication services, we present each child with a $100 voucher to be used when he or she does “Go Term.” We talk about “Go Term” at significant events of our students’ lives – when they enter first grade, when they enter high school, when they graduate. I’m praying for hundreds of our young people to be part of this in the coming years.

SBC Today: What are the most significant doctrinal issues that the church will struggle with in the next few decades?
Stephen Rummage: In the face of an increasingly decadent culture, I think evangelical churches are going to struggle with how and even whether to hold fast to biblical morality and truth. For instance, homosexuality has become normalized in our culture. When pastors preach that it is an abomination (Leviticus 18:22) and that those who practice it will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9), we often are viewed as unloving, intolerant, and even un-Christlike, even when we proclaim redemption and restoration for all who turn from sin to Christ. Homosexuality is just one example. We could also include divorce, cohabitation, use of profanity, consumption of alcohol, and even drug use. I am grieved that some so-called evangelicals are already compromising biblical truth in order to accommodate cultural mores. I fear that this will increase. In fact, I know it will. It’s just one expression of the apostasy that will characterize the last days.

SBC Today: How do you balance ministry and family responsibilities?
Stephen Rummage: I am blessed to have married a woman who shares my calling into ministry, and we have brought up our son to love Jesus and to love the church. As a result, our whole family is involved with ministry. It’s just who we are. Even so, I guard my time with my family and try to be very intentional about my schedule. I’m a better pastor when I’m also a good dad and husband.

SBC Today: What do you do for fun?
Stephen Rummage: I love to read. I love to listen to music. I love to hang out with my wife and son. I usually take a consecutive 24-hour period each week when I don’t do “church stuff.” Taking regular time off gives me more energy, creativity, and joy when I am engaged in the work of the church.

SBC Today: What are your two or three favorite TV shows? Movies?
Stephen Rummage: I probably laugh out loud more at “The Andy Griffith Show” than anything else, even though I’ve seen most episodes more times than I can count. I think wholesome laughter is one of the greatest gifts God gives us. I enjoyed Secretariat recently, as well as Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I had no idea there were that many monkeys just waiting to take over San Francisco!

Dr. Robby Gallaty is Pastor of Brainerd Baptist Church in Chattanooga, TN. He earned an M. Div. in Expository Preaching and Ph.D. in Expository Preaching from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. His interest in discipleship led to his organizing Replicate Conferences. He is author of two works addressing discipleship, Creating an Atmosphere to Hear God Speak and Unashamed: Taking a Radical Stand for Christ.

SBC Today: What do you think are the greatest challenges confronting the SBC?
Robby Gallaty: The future effectiveness of the Southern Baptist Convention depends upon our obedience to the Lord’s Great Commission as local churches. One way to become more effective involves some transitional emphases at the mission sending SBC agencies, the IMB and NAMB, as well as the state conventions. The SBC has always been a “grassroots” convention with Baptistic doctrine emphasizing the local church. As a younger pastor it’s encouraging to see a concentrated emphasis shifting from the organization as a whole to the individual local church. One example is the area of missions where the churches are being challenged to adopt unreached, unengaged people groups. This year our church is adopting five unreached, unengaged people groups. The strategy will be for Brainerd Baptist Church to provide resources, both short and long term teams, and full-time families who will move to these areas. We plan to commit to do our part. Still, we will never fulfill the Great Commission unless we all work together. There is no room for building our own kingdoms, names, or ministries in this effort of obedience. We are called to build God’s kingdom, understanding that the sum total of all efforts in the local churches far surpasses what can be accomplished individually.

SBC Today: What do you see as the greatest opportunities opening to the SBC?
Robby Gallaty: As I have already mentioned, the empowerment of local churches to become the missions sending agency is an incredible opportunity. Empowering and mobilizing people in the local church cannot be underestimated. God has always and will always work through people. The Millennials (ages 20-29), as the largest generation since the Baby Boomers, are potentially an incredible resource to leverage to reach the nations. The younger generation along with the advent of technology—Twitter, Facebook, and Skype—offers an impactful amalgam to reach the world population now more than ever before. We are able to be creative in delivering the Gospel, without changing the message in taking the Gospel to another context, whether it be local or global.

SBC Today: What are your thoughts about a possible SBC name change?
Robby Gallaty: I think Lifeway Research’s findings provide valid reason for considering a name change. I found two statistics to be surprsing. First, over a third of Americans strongly agree that a SBC church is not for them. While, we don’t know all the factors involved, it is startling. Second, only 10% of Americans said that knowing a church is SBC would have a positive impact. If I owned a company that manufactured a product, which would change the lives of every person on the planet, and I heard that, unbeknownst to me, the name of the organization would preclude 33% of consumers from ever considering my product, I would not think twice about changing the name. I would understand that the mission of the organization, which is to change every person on the planet, is more important than my personal identity. We aren’t selling a product; we are sharing the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. If obstructions get in the way of our mission, we must consider the hindrance and take steps to resolve it.

SBC Today: What is the key to being a faithful and effective pastor?
Robby Gallaty: I have only been pastoring for 6 years, so I am still growing and learning as a pastor/leader. First, I believe that the greatest gift to my church is my personal holiness before the Lord. This includes my personal quiet time with God, prayer life, obedience, and times of fasting and solitude. I saw a definitive difference in my life 6 years ago when I started praying consistently with a prayer partner. I believe that every pastor should have someone they pray with multiple times a week.

Secondly, my effectiveness should be gauged by how faithfully I am equipping the saints for the work of ministry (Eph. 4:11-12). It is easy to fall into the trap of gauging success in the church based on buildings, bodies, and budgets. But, this mentality presents a problem. Jesus rarely, if every, gauged one’s effectiveness by these factors. During his ministry, he never had a building. In fact, one man desired to follow him, and Jesus responded, “Foxes have holes, birds have nest, but the Son of Man does not have a place to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). The man is caught off guard by the response of Christ. Not only does Jesus not have a meeting place, he doesn’t have a place to lay his head.

Additionally, Jesus was not focused on drawing a large crowd. Although he spoke to the masses on a few occasions, he consistently departed to be with the twelve. After he ascended into heaven in Acts 1, there were only 120 disciples gathered together, praying for the Spirit to descend upon them. According to church growth standards, this number is nothing to write home about. Jesus spoke with authority, he raised the dead, he gave sight to the blind, he cured the sick, and at the end of his ministry, the church had only grown to 120 people. Hear me out, I am not discounted the work of our Lord. What I want us to consider is that Jesus was not interested in growing a mile wide and an inch deep. Jesus developed mature, faithful disciples.

Finally, the focus of Jesus’ ministry was not centered on finances. Think about whom he put in charge of the money. It was Judas, and we all know what happened to him. Jesus was interested in developing people. When I began pastoring Brainerd Baptist Church, I instituted a two-fold strategy: 1) I was committed to expositionally preaching the word of God. Because many churches have abandoned exegetical preaching of the word of God, I trusted that people would be transformed through this type of preaching; and 2) I committed to discipling the people we who were already in attendance. Instead of using people to invite people to fill up the church with undiscipled disciples, I fostered an environment where discipleship was the norm. Ultimately, the goal for our people is to develop into mature disciples of Christ through accountable relationships in order to replicate Christ like followers.

SBC Today: What is the one thing that has made the difference at your church since you have been there?
Robby Gallaty: I created a pastoral leadership team of 6. These men meet in my office every Monday for three to four hours to pray, discuss, and evaluate three areas of ministry in the life of the church: 1) Spiritual Impact and Teaching, 2) Pastoring and Shepherding, and 3) Overseeing and Administrating. Since I am not the only person in church that hears from God, these men provide valuable wisdom for me. In addition to direction and understanding, they are a sounding board for ideas. An idea is sometimes shaped for weeks or months before it makes it to the staff and volunteer ministry teams and finally to the congregation.

SBC Today: Some may not know your dramatic salvation story. Share your testimony with us.
Robby Gallaty:  I was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana in a religious home. I knew of God through Catholicism but unfortunately never had a relationship with Him. After graduating from William Carey College in Hattiesburg, MS, I moved back to New Orleans to start my own business. At this time, I began learning Brazilian Jiu-jitsu in order to compete in Mixed Martial Arts events. I took a bouncer job at a night club in New Orleans in order to help pay the bills. Coming home one night from work, an 18-wheeler going 65 miles per hour rear-ended my car. The doctors sent me home from the hospital with four things: Oxycontin, Valium, Soma, and Percocet. The medications soon took hold of my life and in addition to consuming drugs, I began selling them. Between the years 1999-2003, eight of my close friends died and six were arrested. I began to cry out to the Lord for help.

On November 12, 2002, Jesus Christ met me in my room. A twenty-four hour experience would change my life forever. I was called to be not only a disciple of Jesus but also a spokesperson for Him. The following January I enrolled at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary to pursue a degree in Expository Preaching, and I met my wife, Kandi, two months later. We were living in Chalmette, Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina hit. Our house was completely flooded with 8 feet of water.  Our family lost everything as well. My childhood home had 12 feet of water and my sister’s house was inundated with 15 feet of water.

After losing everything, a friend, Rob Wilton, encouraged me to move to South Carolina to serve on staff at his father’s church. Under the leadership of Dr. Don Wilton, First Baptist Spartanburg provided needed support and assistance for us. They provided not only employment, but also a home, clothes, food, and pastoral experience. During this time, I sensed the Lord leading him to pastor a church. After returning to Louisiana, I was called to Immanuel Baptist Church in Morgan City, LA. We witnessed an increase in worship attendance there from 65 to over 300. Then we were called to Brainerd Baptist Church in Chattanooga in 2008.

SBC Today: Who are two or three of your “heroes in ministry”?
Robby Gallaty: The three guys that have impacted me are still alive. Each has created a passion in my life for a different area of ministry. After coming off of a three-year addiction to drugs, I stumbled upon Edgewater Baptist church where Jim Shaddix was the pastor. Shaddix, who is currently the pastor of Riverside Baptist Church in Denver, modeled expositional preaching every single week. For the first time, the Bible came alive to me.

Another person that has been instrumental in my life is David Platt, pastor of the Church at Brookhills in Birmingham. Six months after coming to Christ, David invited me to meet with him over lunch to study the Bible, memorize Scripture, and pray. It was during that period of my life that the Lord fostered in me a heart for the nations. David encouraged me to start seminary at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. After starting seminary in January of 2004, I met with David twice a week to pray and study the Word, and eventually became his personal assistant in 2005.

Lastly, Tim Lafleur, former BCM Director of Nicholls State University, built in me a passion for disciplemaking. Tim invited me to spend a summer with him in Glorieta, NM as Camp Pastor of Highpoint. For three straight months, we talked theology from morning to night. When I returned home, I was not the same person who went there. As a result of the investment of these three men, I am committed to the expositional preaching, disciplemaking, and missions.

SBC Today: What is your approach to preaching?
Robby Gallaty: I believe the most effective and reliable way to preach the Word is through expository preaching. Paul gave Timothy a challenge in his final letter: “I charge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus who will Judge the Living and the Dead and by His Appearing and By His kingdom, Preach the Word” (2 Tim. 4:1).

What is an Expository Preaching? It clarifies that which is unclear. It uncovers truths of the text which lay hidden through casual reading. The goal of the expositor is to take the Authors Intended Meaning (A.I.M.) of a particular passage of Scripture and through exegesis, hermeneutics, and homiletics share these truths through spoken word. Power in the pulpit comes from presenting God’s Word to God’s people. Haddon Robinson said, “Not all passionate pleading from the pulpit, however, has divine authority. While a preacher must be a “herald”—he must herald the Word. Anything less cannot legitimately be called “preaching.”

Certain presuppositions are fundamental to the expository message: (1) Scripture is the Word of God (2 Tim 3:16-17), (2) Scripture is inerrant, (3) Scripture is infallible; and (4) Scripture is sufficient. I love what Martin Luther, the great German Reformer, said about his own preaching:  “I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word: otherwise I did nothing…The Word did it all.”  The job of the expository preacher is not merely to talk about what God said in the text, it is not merely to describe what happened in the Biblical narrative, but to actually declare before the people, “Thus saith the Lord.”

SBC Today: How do you help your congregation focus on missions?
Robby Gallaty: We have adopted a three-fold strategy at Brainerd Baptist Church. We provide our people with opportunities to participate in local and global mission trips. Additionally, we partner with missionaries abroad developing indigenous churches in regions of unengaged and unreached people groups. As I have already mentioned, this year we are adopting five unreached, unengaged people groups. Finally, we create an awareness of Missions by allowing the team members to share a testimony of what God did in their life. Our mission statement is: Deliver, Disciple, Deploy.

SBC Today: How do you balance ministry and family responsibilities?
Robby Gallaty: This is an area I am constantly working on. I just graduated in December with my PhD from NOBTS, so there were three areas vying for my time: family, church, and school. My wife has been very supportive while completing my degree while pastoring. I honestly do not know how I finished the degree with the demands of the church. God has been gracious to me over the last few years.  Prayerfully, I am moving into a new stage of life, so there should be more balance in my life. Overall, my family comes first, and whenever they don’t, my wife has an open door to remind me.

SBC Today: What do you do for fun?
Robby Gallaty: I like to read. After switching from hardback books to reading on the IPad last year, I find that I can read faster for some reason. Now every book I purchase is on the IPad in a digital version. This helps when I travel as I am reading multiple books at one time. When I can find the time, I enjoy playing the guitar. I also love to play golf. It develops hand eye coordination and cultivates humility at the same time. I work out four days a week. Not only is this a stress relief for me, it also provides a venue for developing relationships with unbelievers.

SBC Today: What are your two or three favorite TV shows? Movies?
Robby Gallaty:  I enjoy watching the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Years ago, I studied Mixed Martial Arts, specifically Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, aspiring to fight in the UFC one day. A car accident ended that desire. Since I cannot train anymore, I enjoy watching the fights. Over the years, I have used the fights as an outreach to share the gospel with guys who wouldn’t otherwise attend church. Drug addicts, fighters, and even a professing Mormon have come to my house to watch a fight.

SBC Today: Thanks for the interview, Robby. We appreciate so much your commitment to expository preaching, and the dual focus on  evangelism and discipleship that you have exemplified. We are excited to see what God is going to do through you in the days to come!

Jeff Gerke is CEO and Publisher of Marcher Lord Press, which publishes Christian speculative fiction, and formerly was Senior Fiction Editor at Multnomah Publishers.  In addition to seven books published under his own name, Jeff has also authored six Christian novels and co-authored two nonfiction books (with Ryan Dobson and Clark Gerhart) under the pseudonym of Jefferson Scott.  He earned a Bachelor of Science in Radio-TV-Film from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

SBC Today: How did you get into writing Christian fiction?
Jeff Gerke: I’m a film school grad, and I wanted to make Christian movies. When that wasn’t immediately happening, I thought I’d go to seminary, not only because I wanted to learn the Bible better but also to help bolster my ability to make Christian film. I already had the film part of my Christian film credentials; now I was getting the Christian part.

All through my time at Southwestern, my peers would tell me they were feeling led to become pastors or missionaries or youth ministers. They’d ask me where I was headed, and I’d say I felt that God was leading me to write and make Christian movies. They’d look at me like I’d said I was secretly attending a charismatic miracle service tomorrow night.

Along the way, I got discouraged about making Christian film and decided to convert my screenplay ideas to novels in the meantime. When I graduated, I struck a deal with my wife. I told her I was going to give this Christian fiction publishing thing a go for six months. If nothing had happened by the end of that time, I would get some job. Six months—how naïve I was!

Long story short, I had gotten some nibbles, but at the end of that six months I had no contract. So I got a job as a middle manager at a communications company in Dallas. A few months later, I got a call from the senior fiction editor at Multnomah Publishers saying he really wanted to publish my novels. At that point, I had only six chapters of one book written, but on the strength of that, I got contracts for three novels. (This actually doesn’t happen in publishing—but it happened!)

That contract was for my first three novels—a trilogy of near-future Christian technothrillers—called Virtually Eliminated, Terminal Logic, and Fatal Defect.

SBC Today: You have written in several genres – technothriller, military thrillers, and spiritual warfare. But you seem to prefer what you call “Christian speculative fiction.” What do you mean by that description?
Jeff Gerke: The term speculative fiction is not something I invented. It’s a term in use in the secular market. It’s an umbrella term that includes genres like fantasy, science fiction, time travel, paranormal, supernatural thrillers, horror, vampire, cyberpunk, steampunk, alternate history, post-apocalyptic, urban fantasy, and more. Or, as I like to say, anything weird.

Christian speculative fiction, then, is anything weird from the Christian worldview. It’s Christian fantasy and Christian steampunk, and so forth. Plus we add two new subgenres to the category: spiritual warfare fiction (think Frank Peretti) and End Times fiction (think Left Behind).

Yes, I’m afraid I love the speculative stories. Since the two stories that made me want to become a storyteller—Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings—were both speculative, it’s what comes out of me now if you squeeze me. But since I’m a Christian, the particular flavor of speculative fiction that comes out of me is that which arises from the Evangelical worldview.

The best-loved and most powerful stories in our collective consciousness are all speculative, touched with the supernatural. Whether it’s A Christmas Carol or Cinderella or Dracula or Superman or Beowulf or Icarus or Hercules (or This Present Darkness or Left Behind), the stories that speak best to us are those that peer into realms beyond what we know. For generations, Christians have abdicated these genres, abhorring any connection with “magic” or whatever. But we are now reclaiming this ground for Christ, who is Lord of the realms beyond.

SBC Today: Describe the basic premise or storyline of your trilogy technothrillers, and your trilogy of military thrillers.
Jeff Gerke: My near-future technothrillers are about a Christian husband and father who is a virtual reality programmer. In the first book, he contacts the FBI because he thinks he has detected a pattern among the allegedly accidental electrocutions that have happened across the futuristic version of the Internet. He thinks there is a single person behind these electrocutions. He thinks someone is out there killing people and getting away with it. The FBI scoffs at him—until someone very valuable to them is “accidentally” electrocuted. They cajole our hero into helping them find out if there really is someone out there doing this. And of course there is, and high-tech adventures ensue.

In the second book, a massively advanced gaming artificial intelligence “gets out” into the real world, but it thinks the real world is its game world gone amuck. So it intends to delete the entire player list and start over. And to do so, it has to gain access to the military’s very real array of orbital attack satellites and their nuclear weaponry. In the third novel, Muslim terrorists seize control of an island-based biological weapons facility and get hold of a weaponized form of botulism in aerosol form, which they intend to use on pretty much everyone else. Our hero, who has been betrayed by his own supposed allies, goes to the island to try to be very unprogrammer-like and actually get his hands dirty to avert this disaster.

With that third book, you can see me segueing into military fiction, as a team of Navy SEALs makes a significant appearance in that novel. My second trilogy, the Operation: Firebrand series, is about a privately funded squad of mostly ex-Special Forces operatives, all Christian, who are tasked to go into the world’s hotspots on high-tech, covert missions of mercy.

The first novel has the team coming together and getting a group of orphans out of danger in the middle of a revolution at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The second book sends the team to Sudan to rescue a girl who has been sold into sexual slavery—and then they decide to stay and wage their own private war against the slavers. The third book sees the team going to China and then into a North Korean death camp to try to rescue a family that had been captured while attempting to defect.

SBC Today: Why did you use a pseudonym in your earlier works?
Jeff Gerke: Several reasons, but not least because my last name, Gerke, is very easily mispronounced. It’s pronounced GUR-key, but you can imagine the mispronunciations I get. My medical provider’s automated phone call system refers to me as Jeff Jerk. Since there is no one living here by that name, I don’t think I should have to pay them. [ahem]

Also, I wanted some psychological distance from my books. People don’t usually say John Grisham’s books do well, they say John Grisham does well. If my books were to do well—or, more likely, poorly—I wanted to be able to say it was that other person (and his books) that did poorly, not me!

Third, I wanted to avoid a pride trap. I didn’t want to sign my name for the waiter or hotel clerk and sit there wondering if she recognized my name. By inventing a name, I thought I could avoid that temptation altogether.

As it happened, the novels all did terribly, so I needn’t have worried! But at least no one mispronounced my name…

SBC Today: You’re associated with Marcher Lord Press now. Some of your MLP books have won awards, haven’t they?
Jeff Gerke: Yes, I am publisher, founder, CEO, and chief bottle-washer at Marcher Lord Press. We produce Christian speculative fiction in full-length novels for adults and older teens. And in April 2012 we’re launching into YA (teen) fiction, as well. The novels are all books written by other people. I might eventually publish some of my own new fiction under the MLP banner, but so far I’ve been having fun discovering new voices and bringing them to market.

We’ve been very blessed when it has come to reviews in major journals (Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, etc.) and in the major awards we’ve won. For a small press, we’ve gotten an inordinate amount of attention, and for that we’re extremely grateful. The two main awards programs for Christian fiction are the Christy Awards and the ACFW Carol Awards. Since the first year we’ve entered, we’ve won the Christy Award in our category every time. And in last year’s ACFW Carol Awards, four of the six finalists in our category were MLP books, and one of those four took home the award.

We’ve also won the EPIC Award, the Indie Award, the INSPY Award, and several others.

SBC Today: What additional book projects do you have in mind?
Jeff Gerke: For me personally, my writing lately has been in the area of how to write better fiction. My The Art & Craft of Writing Christian Fiction came out in 2009 and had been well-received. I now have two fiction craftsmanship books out with Writers Digest Books, which is to writers what Sports Illustrated Books is to sports fans. Plot Versus Character released in 2010, and my new one, The First 50 Pages, released in November 2011.

On the fiction side, I’ve written a couple of short stories, like the guiding story in Ether Ore, and some kids’ stories for Focus on the Family’s Clubhouse magazine.

Mainly I’ve been concentrating on growing Marcher Lord Press. I’ve been doing lots of work as a freelance book editor, cover designer, and typesetter to pay the bills, but I’m trying to do less of that and more MLP. Plus, I’m heading toward the launch in 2012 of www.FictionAcademy.com, a site where novelists can go to learn everything I know about how to write good fiction.

SBC Today: What advice do you have for others who are interested in writing Christian fiction?
Jeff Gerke: Learn your craft (through books, writers conferences, writing coaches, etc.), be willing to leave the traditional book publishing route and explore the alternatives, work as hard as you can, and trust God for the results.

SBC Today: What are you trying to accomplish in writing Christian fiction? Do you attempt to embed a Christian message in it? Are you attempting to inform, inspire, entertain, or something else?
Jeff Gerke: I believe that every Christian novelist is called either to challenge the church or reach out to the lost. The problem is that each group thinks theirs is the only true calling, and that leads to some unnecessary and silly infighting. We need to agree to let Peter go to the Jews and Paul to the Gentiles.

It’s also imperative that novels entertain. It’s not a four-letter word, even for Christians writing to Christians. Jesus was a very entertaining speaker, and we should emulate Him. If you don’t engage the mind and even the humor, you don’t gain their heart.

My first novels were apologetic in nature. At that time, my father was not a Christian, so I was trying to tell a very smart and entertaining story that depicted an imperfect Christian man trying to live the Christian life in the middle of a difficult situation. I wanted these books to speak to him, to paint a picture of what Christianity was and wasn’t like.

My military trilogy was targeted to the church, I suppose. I didn’t have an apologetic impulse in mind with those. I felt the burden to do something on behalf of the innocents I saw suffering around the world, and the idea of a paramilitary team who could get in covertly, do the mission of mercy, and get out with expertise was very appealing to me. That was a series that arose from passion, and I addressed it to anyone who would feel that passion with me.

At Marcher Lord Press, the books I publish are targeted to the church. Except we don’t have to deal with those parameters as much now as we used to. Now, with no bookstore to walk into—Christian or otherwise—people can buy our books whether they self-identify as believers or not. We’re not shelved with the other Christian novels. We’re not shelved at all: We’re on the Internet, where anonymous buyers can buy more or less anonymously.

Some upcoming books will be more targeted to the unbeliever. I have an epic fantasy series under contract that will be the Christian answer to the phenomenally bestselling George R.R. Martin books. These will have Christian content and characters, but they will be targeted to the unbeliever. But most MLP books are designed for people like me!

SBC Today: Who are your favorite authors and/or books?
Jeff Gerke: My answer to this question sometimes triggers the “Yeah, sure” response from people, but it’s true. My favorite Christian novelists are the ones I publish. I would so much rather be reading a Marcher Lord Press novel than anything else I’ve encountered. These men and women are writing the very stories I think the world most needs, and they’re doing it with excellence, as our awards testify.

Of course I love Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I love Magician by Raymond E. Feist. Not counting Marcher Lord Press novels, I think the best Christian novel I’ve ever read is Byzantium by Stephen Lawhead. I very much enjoyed Bernard Cornwell’s The Warlord Chronicles.

SBC Today: What is your favorite book of the Bible? Why?
Jeff Gerke: Definitely John’s Gospel. I love Luke because he records so many of Jesus’ parables (fiction). But there’s something deeper and imminently spiritual about John. Of course the Holy Spirit can and does speak to me through every book in the Bible, but when I open John’s Gospel it’s like I’m standing at the base of Jacob’s ladder and looking up. The access to insights into God and into my own life just seem amplified in those pages.

SBC Today: Do you find it more fulfilling to write your own books or to assist in and edit the books of others?
Jeff Gerke: It’s a toss-up. If we’re talking about the editorial process, that’s pretty fun. I like helping the novelist better do what it is he’s trying to do.

But where I really enjoy fiction is either in writing it myself or in publishing someone else’s book. I’m an encourager, but even so I never realized how gratifying it would be to publish someone else’s novel. When I can see it go out there and earn accolades and awards and know that I brought that book to market and helped launch that author’s career, it’s incredible. A very paternal feeling. And of course I love writing my own fiction. Never do I feel so akin to God as when I’m creating worlds and people. I’m a little more deterministic with my creations than I perceive God to be with His, but the process of creation is heady and wonderful.

SBC Today: How does writing fiction fit into your sense of calling?  What other things are you doing in Kingdom service?
Jeff Gerke: As I mentioned, I feel called to writing fiction. Maybe the movie thing will happen one day, but God has given me a career on the book side for now.

I serve the Kingdom by giving a voice to these novelists who touch the edge of heaven with their stories. I serve the Kingdom by allowing these novels to challenge and edify the church and speak to believers and unbelievers alike. I serve the Kingdom with my fiction how-to books, as I equip Christian novelists to bring sacrifices of excellence. I serve the Kingdom by traveling across the country multiple times every year to teach at Christian writers conferences (and with the launch of FictionAcademy.com). God has given me the gift of teaching, and one of the ways I help build the Kingdom is by teaching, equipping, and encouraging aspiring Christian novelists.

Outside of publishing, I teach in my church’s children’s department. I’m also friends with our pastor—who went to that other seminary in the D/FW area—and I’m working with him to get some of his messages out farther by turning them into e-books for the Kindle. In addition to raising our two “natural” children, my wife and I have adopted a little special needs girl from China. We probably can’t change the world, but we can certainly change her world. But despite our noble intentions, I am convinced that God has blessed us with her at least as much as any blessing we have brought to her.

SBC Today: Thanks, Jeff, for helping provide quality Christian fiction as an alternative for Christians who love suspense, technothrillers, military fiction, and speculative fiction, but find secular writings to be burdened with nihilism, unchristian language, and unwholesome sexual themes.

Clint Pressley is the senior pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC. His previous experience includes six years as senior pastor at Dauphin Way Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama.

SBC Today: What do you think are the greatest challenges and opportunities confronting the SBC?
Clint Pressley: I believe the challenges and opportunities facing our convention go hand in hand. We are fortunate that many of the fundamental doctrines we believe to be sacrosanct have been long established at a time when other denominations are struggling with issues like the inerrancy of Scripture and the centrality of the cross. We have long since settled those matters; and as we build on this foundation of strong doctrine, we are poised to continue leading out in other areas.

I do, however, believe the SBC is facing an identity crisis. Are we going to continue doing the same things we have always done (creating more programs, spending more money on bureaucracy) or are we going to adapt to the challenges that face a 21st-century gospel people? Are we going to get serious about the mission of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations or are we going to retreat into our provision, our programs, and our paperwork? We face a choice. It is not a choice that we make one time but a choice that we make every day: Are we going to turn this mighty weapon of God known as the church on our enemy or will our armaments grow tired and rusty while we continue to haggle over things that have no eternal impact?

SBC Today: What are your thoughts about a possible SBC name change?
Clint Pressley: The name change does not bother me. If it is feasible from a legal and financial standpoint and will better identify who we desire to be, then I am in full support.

SBC Today: What is the key to being a faithful/effective/successful pastor?
Clint Pressley: God demands two things from those He places in leadership over His church: humility and holiness. Everything that it takes to be an effective minister of the gospel is bound up in those two characteristics. One of most dangerous things in any church in America is a pastor that struts around the church like an emperor.

A pastor must be faithful in prayer. E. M. Bounds once wrote, “Many of those occupying prominent positions in church life are not praying men. It is greatly to be feared that much of the work of the Church is being done by those who are perfect strangers to the closet. Small wonder that the work does not succeed.” Pastors must maintain a close-knit family. We must have a deep love and affection for those we shepherd. I believe that successful church leaders will not live a balanced life, but their lives will be weighted heavily toward the work God has called them to and that we should engage all that God has entrusted us with in the proclamation of His gospel. I believe that everything we do must be saturated with the Word of God. I believe that we should work with everything we have and be willing to laugh with our people, laugh at ourselves, and pour our hearts into our ministry.

SBC Today: What is one key mistake that you see pastors and/or church staff members making that causes them problems in their churches?
Clint Pressley: I think oftentimes we guard ourselves and choose not to invest in people at all levels. Sometimes the most unlikely of people will surprise you because you choose to make a small investment.

SBC Today: Who are two or three of your “heroes in ministry”?
Clint Pressley: The first person that comes to mind is Johnny Hunt at FBC Woodstock. He is faithful to the word, faithful to his church, faithful to his family; and I don’t think anyone in the convention works harder than he does to reach his city and the world for Christ. I love his passion. Another stalwart in ministry is John Piper up in Minneapolis. He is always faithful to preach the Word and doesn’t stray from the truth. Even in that, though, he is ever-mindful of his need for a Savior and his inability to act outside of the sovereign hand of God. He is a tremendous example of humble shepherding of the flock of God. A few others would be Rick Byargeon of Temple Baptist Church in Ruston, LA and Harry Reader of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, AL. These men have all had a tremendous influence on my life in many ways.

SBC Today: What is the toughest lesson you have learned in ministry?
Clint Pressley: I have learned that no matter how hard I try everybody is not going to like me. Oftentimes pastors have to make hard, unpopular choices to remain faithful to the Word or the vision God has given them. I have to constantly remind myself that I serve a one-member audience.

SBC Today: What is your approach to preaching?
Clint Pressley: I believe preaching is the proclamation of God’s Word and not the pronouncement of a man’s opinion. We are calling 2012 “The Year of the Bible” at Hickory Grove. During my sermon preparation I always start with Scripture and read it ten times, very slowly. After that I handwrite the passage on a legal pad and start developing blocks of thought from the text that will become my main points. Next I consult the appropriate language tools and get the semantic domain of the most important words in the chosen passage. Then I will consult critical commentaries to make sure I’m not inventing things that cannot be substantiated by the text. Next I consult some devotional commentaries to see other’s ideas. As I continue I set the overarching theme and points to support the argument, develop opening thoughts, and incorporate augmenting scriptures. Sunday mornings I get up at 3:45, write out the full manuscript (always by hand), preach 5 times, go home, have lunch, and collapse.

SBC Today: How do you help your congregation focus on missions?
Clint Pressley: We believe that the goal of missions is to reach the nations and that the nations begin across the street. We strive to always keep missions at the forefront of what we do. We keep missions in front of our people, our staff, our leadership, and each of our ministries. We engage in 12-15 cross-cultural missionary journeys annually that are commissioned by our church. Each program or event that we have is tied to a mission’s purpose. Each Sunday school class adopts an HGBC missionary on the field. Our student ministry takes a trip each spring break and each summer as well. We also have manifold entry points within our community for our people to get involved in some capacity.

SBC Today: What are the most significant doctrinal issues that the church will struggle with in the next few decades?
Clint Pressley: It is difficult to gaze into a crystal ball and see what struggles are coming our way. Each church will wrestle with different things. I think the temptation will always be to water down the gospel in an attempt to make it more palatable to a wider audience. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not palatable to sinners. It confronts, offends, and convicts; but, if we will let it do that, then it also saves, restores, and redeems. We can disagree on many things, but we must never lose sight of the gospel, the whole gospel and nothing but the gospel.

SBC Today: How do you balance ministry and family responsibilities?
Clint Pressley: Ministry does not allow for balance. I love my family dearly and keep them very close but our home is saturated with what I do in ministry. I am not seeking balance but unbridled intensity in both areas.

SBC Today: What do you do for fun?
Clint Pressley: I enjoy old-school weightlifting (like from the 30s and 40s) and I like old cars.

SBC Today: What are your two or three favorite TV shows? Movies?
Clint Pressley: The only television show I watch is NCIS. I like all of Clint Eastwood’s westerns, and of course Tombstone.

SBC Today: Thanks, Clint.  We appreciate the young preachers such as yourself who are faithful expository preachers of the Word!

Dr. Green is Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Brandon, Florida, and has served as President of the Florida Baptist Convention and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Southern Seminary.

SBC Today: What do you think are the greatest challenges confronting the SBC?

Tommy Green: The challenges of the Southern Baptist Convention are in the area of unity and clarity. Our unity has been fostered through cooperation of our churches in world evangelization. This methodology has been weakened through a move toward societal missions that reduces the resources for our total mission endeavors as a Convention. We were challenged at the last Southern Baptist Convention to adopt an unreached people group, plant a church, and increase our Cooperative Program monies in the local church. Each challenge is worthy and needful, but a unified approach by our denominational agencies would enable the churches to determine the priority for our Convention. Unity and clarity would position us to be on the same page working together to accomplish the high calling of the Gospel for the nations. The Conservative Resurgence rendered unity and clarity in the theological realm for our Convention and we were able to move forward. This generation seeks an authentic and genuine focus and will respond to a clear and unified message that is Christ centered and that propels us to world evangelization.  The challenge will be keeping the main thing the main thing and that is the Great Commission of Jesus Christ.

SBC Today: What do you see as the greatest opportunities opening to the SBC?

Tommy Green: The opportunities for the Gospel of Jesus Christ are greater than at any other time in history. We have the resources, accessibility, and opportunity to impact our world on a local and global level. The economic downturn is not a deterrent to our task but a powerful moment for God’s people to demonstrate His faithfulness through His people. The Book of Acts records the obedience of the Apostles and the early church and the 30 years that changed the world. Our generation is uniquely poised to impact and influence our world and we can accomplish this work, if we respond to the call. We can be the ones turning the world upside down through obedience to the Lord. The fields are ripe unto the harvest and we are presented with the opportunity to be laborers in the harvest of souls for the Lord Jesus Christ.

SBC Today: What are your thoughts about a possible SBC name change?

Tommy Green: I support the concept of examining and proposing a name change for the SBC. My support is based on the global expanse of the ministry of our denomination and that a name would reflect the mission of our Convention. Global Baptists would maintain our identity as Baptists and reflect the scope of our ministry together in Christ.

SBC Today: What is the key to being a faithful/effective/successful pastor?

Tommy Green: The work of the pastor is filled with tremendous challenges and leading a congregation requires Godly wisdom. The pastor should maintain the focus of relationships in his ministry. The relationship with the Lord, his family, and his congregation establishes the priority of fulfilling the call that God has placed on your life. Building strong relationships enables others to see your heart that burns deeply for the Lord. The process of being the preacher, pastor, and leader requires investment, time, and experiences that grow out of relationships that you are privileged to share as a pastor. You must seek God’s word and will for your setting and commit your life to that place, people, and purpose.

SBC Today: What is one key mistake that you see pastors and/or church staff members making that causes them problems in their churches?

Tommy Green: The key mistakes are making changes too fast, not bringing people along with you, and becoming a CEO rather than a shepherd of your flock.

SBC Today: Who are two or three of our “heroes in ministry?”

Tommy Green: My heroes in ministry are my father who modeled godliness before me and reared me in a Christian home. Dr. Chuck Kelley who allowed me to grade for him during my doctoral studies and he has been a mentor and friend to me in my ministry. Dr. John Sullivan has taught me leadership and organizational skills by example which I implement in my ministry. I have been inspired by many faithful pastors who have remained true to their calling and led churches to amazing accomplishments in ministry.

SBC Today: What is the toughest lesson you have learned in ministry?

Tommy Green: The tough lesson is being a high expectation pastor who had to learn patience to move a church from low expectations to higher expectations. This process requires time, love, persistence, encouragement and facing the obstacles with grace.

SBC Today: What is your approach to preaching?

Tommy Green: I advocate planning your preaching and preaching through a book of the Bible. The expository approach to preaching causes you to be disciplined in your study of the Scriptures. The time that you spend in advance planning your sermons for the following year reaps tremendous benefits in your ministry and God will lead you in this planning process. Preaching through a book of the Bible, word by word, phrase by phrase, verse by verse, establishes a depth in your proclamation that enables people to grow through the preaching of the Word.

SBC Today: How do you help your congregation focus on missions?

Tommy Green: Missions changed my approach to ministry and helped change the heart of our church. We celebrate missions through giving. We give 10% of our undesignated receipts to the Cooperative Program, support the different mission emphases of our denomination, and support local mission work through our giving. Our church gives in a generous fashion to missions beyond our campus.  We celebrate missions through going. We are consistently sending people on short term mission work. The reporting and celebrating of this mission approach inspires our church family. We have people on local, national, and international mission trips throughout the year.

We pray in a specific manner for our missionaries and their prayer needs are kept before our church family. We have a Mission Residence that IMB missionaries on state side assignment can utilize. This ministry enables us to have missionaries in our church on regular basis. The educating our people in the area of missions is an important part of our ministry and we seek to keep our people informed about the work of our missionaries around the world. We are also involved in church planting as a church. Each Sunday at our church we have ministries in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and the Deaf language being expressed on our campus.

SBC Today: How do you balance ministry and family responsibilities?

Tommy Green: Karen and I are a different season in life with our children grown and out of the home. We have been blessed with grandchildren and they are a joy in our life. We attempt to balance time with our children each week. The time that Karen and I have together has increased because she is now able to participate in ministry events with me and we often go on mission trips together. The balance is easier for me at this point in my life than when our three boys were younger and we were involved in sports and other demands as parents.

SBC Today: What do you do for fun?

Tommy Green: I enjoy running, watching sports, huge Alabama fan (RTR!!), hacking at a golf ball from time to time, and playing with the grandchildren.

SBC Today: Is there anything else you would like to tell us about?

Tommy Green: The privilege of serving as a pastor in a local church is a high and holy calling from the Lord. I am blessed by other pastors and their awesome abilities and creativity in ministry. I learn from others and rejoice in God’s blessings upon their churches. We must be together in the Lord and maintain a kingdom agenda and focus. Our strength is in the Lord and working together for the sake of the Gospel. May God richly bless you in your vineyard of ministry and may we serve believing that we can change the world in Christ from where we are planted.

Dr. Bart Barber is Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Farmersville, Texas, a Trustee of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and host of the PraiseGod Barebones blog.

SBC Today:  What do you think are the greatest challenges confronting the SBC?

Bart Barber: I would identify three. First, the decline of support for the Cooperative Program is, I think, the greatest challenge that the SBC faces today. Just this week Baptist Press has reported that CP receipts are down over 11% from last year at this time. The CP is one of the things that defines the modern SBC. Prior to our modern phase, however, the SBC has existed without the CP, so it is not that difficult to imagine what a post-CP SBC would look like. We’ll find more and more missions money going to fundraising agents and we’ll see an overall decline in Great Commission efficiency. The CP is not perfectly efficient, but it has proven to be far more efficient than the society method that is the only real alternative. The SBC can certainly reinvent itself without the CP if it has to do so, but the implications of that reinvention will be far-reaching and entirely negative.

Second, the erosion of the Southern Baptist structures between the local church and the national SBC is, unlike the first challenge, taking the SBC to a place entirely unprecedented in Baptist life. Local associations far predate anything like the SBC, and state Baptist conventions have played a prominent role throughout the entire history of the SBC. Many local associations are in serious trouble and many state conventions are understandably nervous about the future as well. The national SBC has counted upon local associations to be the theological gatekeepers and the fraternal glue of the convention. I think we’re seeing some local associations trying to reassert themselves as the former, but by and large local associations have ceased and desisted from theological watchdog activity. The widening diversity of the SBC (both theological and methodological) has also made it much more difficult to build sisterly bonds among churches in a local association when they may have difficulty discerning what they have in common, with the result that many local Southern Baptist churches are finding kinship relationships in venues other than their local associations. This trend, if it continues, will force the Southern Baptist Convention to find other ways to fulfill these two critically important functions.

Finally, the decline of congregationalism among Southern Baptist churches poses a tremendous challenge for the SBC in the future. The polity of the SBC has been extrapolated from the polity of our local churches. If the leadership of the SBC is increasingly populated with people who need not bother with building a voting consensus in the ministries of their local churches, it is difficult to imagine that there will be no impact upon the manner of their leadership within the national denomination.

SBC Today:  What do you see as the greatest opportunities opening to the SBC?

Bart Barber:  I think that bold missionary thinking like the Embrace initiative show us the opportunities that are before us. Fielding a missionary in 1812 amount to Adoniram Judson’s spending so much time on a boat in transit that he had time to research the entire New Testament (in Greek, no less!) on the topic of baptism and change his theology. Today it takes me longer to go to our annual convention meeting (we normally drive) than it takes for our missionaries to go to a place like Burma. Because of advances in transportation and communication technology, we are able to do much more than our forefathers could do. Really, what would Andrew Fuller and William Carey and Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice accomplish with Skype and British Airways?! And so, I think that finding the right balance between direct local church involvement in international missions and cooperative international missions is the key to our future. I think that the IMB is doing a great job in experimenting in this area, and I believe that, with God’s help, we’ll find a great way forward in this area.

I also believe that an increasingly hostile culture is an opportunity for the SBC. We’ve had a denominational conservative resurgence at the national level. The remaining need is for local church reformation. Historically, environments like the one we seem to be entering have constituted fertile ground for reformation and spiritual awakening. In my lifetime I think we’ll see at least the beginnings of this change.

I think we have an opportunity coming out of the Conservative Resurgence to accomplish a coalescence of inerrantist Baptist churches beyond our present boundaries. In Texas, walls are coming down between the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and the Baptist Missionary Association of Texas. That opportunity exists beyond the Texas State Line, if Southern Baptists would pursue a closer relationship with the broader Baptist Missionary Association. We’ve seen the movement of some prominent Independent Baptists into the SBC, in spite of the fact that the SBC has not made such relationships a strategic priority. The opportunity is there for so much more. I can’t help but wonder whether our desire to do more and better in evangelism and church planting in pioneer areas couldn’t receive a boost if we were to have a closer relationship with conservative Baptist churches that have found themselves left on the outside by the liberal decay of the ABC?

Might I also suggest that we have the opportunity to enter a golden age of Southern Baptist scholarship? Worries that the Conservative Resurgent would make it difficult to staff our seminaries were (excusably) unfounded. The new media have only increased the potential reach of our seminaries and our scholars, giving them the opportunity to lead a broader interest in theological studies than ever before. Gone are the days when Southern Baptists had to walk around with an intellectual chip on our soldiers. Some of the greatest and most thoughtful (if not always best marketed) pastor-theologians on the planet are Southern Baptists.

SBC Today:  What are your thoughts about a possible SBC name change?

Bart Barber:  I’ve blogged about this question extensively, having just posted a new installment, but this will be my first opportunity to try to condense all of my thoughts on the subject into something more concise.

I place no hope in empty marketing gimmicks like a name change as a strategy for improving our spiritual effectiveness in an enterprise like the Great Commission. Not only does it not appeal to me personally, but I also don’t think that such tactics are generally effective. We’re not the first to attempt it, and I’ve yet to see a success story in which a group like the SBC changed its name and consequently experienced revival.

There’s a difference between data and opinion polling. It will be interesting to see whether the name change study group is able to find any hard data supporting a name change that doesn’t amount to opinion polling of strategists and of Southern Baptists outside the South. I’ve personally had conversations with people who haven’t been very successful at evangelism and church planting outside the South who have blamed the lack of success upon the name of the convention. I’ve not found that it is very reliable to base our view of reality upon people’s explanations for why they haven’t accomplished all that they had hoped. I’m not going out of my way to be offensive in saying that. Some places are just hard. I would probably accomplish even less. But if we’re going to spend so much money and effort and get rid of a widely recognized brand that has gone farther than most of the other brands out there, then we ought to have hard, indisputable data to lead us there. I don’t think we’ll have that.

I do believe that there are substantive changes that the SBC could make that might make it appropriate for us to have a new name. I’d have an open mind about that.

SBC Today:  What is the key to being a faithful/effective/successful pastor?

Bart Barber:  I think having a clear, biblical mind about how to measure faithfulness, effectiveness, and success is paramount. Some of us think that we’re failures, when we’re actually amazingly successful in heaven’s eyes. Some of us think we’re the modern-day Spurgeon, and we’re failing. I try to look at biblical material like the letters to the seven churches in Asia in the Apocalypse. When churches are evaluated in the Bible, by what criteria are they evaluated? Now, let me evaluate my church by those criteria.

It amazes me how many churches have job descriptions for the pastor that they have simply written de novo, as though the job of the pastor were not already qualified and defined by scripture. Has Christ authorized us to redefine what he has already defined? At FBC Farmersville we’ve written a lengthy pastoral job description that amounts mostly to an exposition of relevant passages in the New Testament. I try to read it frequently. I hope someday that I fulfill it better than I have up to this point.

Leaving a lot out of the story, as a part of our missions efforts at FBCF I’m working on my Class A Commercial Driver’s License. I was driving along a highway just west of Williston, ND, in the middle of the night when the highway detoured onto a dirt road. At that point I had a cumulative lifetime total of about 2 hours driving an eighteen-wheeler. There I was, trying to drive that thing down a dirt road with no markings, constantly meeting other big-rig traffic, not sure whether I was in the middle of the road or about to run off in the ditch, my anxiety rising way above the redline, and I just had to cry out for help to my deacon who owned the truck and was partnering with me on this trip. In totally over my head, wondering what on earth I was doing was there, panicky and crying out for help. That’s a pretty good illustration of the way I feel in pastoral ministry a lot of the time.

But I’ve got a great church. I’ve been there for nearly thirteen years now, and I’m convinced that long tenure helps, if the Lord will permit you to have it.

I’ve also got to say that seminary education helped me a lot more than I thought it was helping me at the time that I was in seminary. God called me to preach when I was just eleven years old. I preached a good bit in High School, and even pastored a church my senior year. A lot of people told me not to bother with getting an education. Some warned that an education would ruin me. I’ve found just the opposite to be true. Particularly with regard to the amount of time required to prepare good sermons. I get more bang for the buck in my sermon preparation time because of the competence in Greek, Hebrew, and Hermeneutics that I received at the hand of professors like you, Dr. Lemke. Thanks! When I’m able to be more time-efficient in sermon preparation, then I have more time left over to tend to the pastoral care of the flock, administer the organization of the church, be involved in the affairs of the denomination, etc.

SBC Today:  What is some key mistakes that you see pastors and/or church staff members making that causes them problems in their churches?

Bart Barber:  I do think that there are a few mistakes that I’ve almost made from time to time but that I’ve managed to avoid.

First, I think we’ve got to recognize that moral failure in the areas of sexuality, family, or honesty (particularly about money) are big mistakes that a lot of pastors make and that are utterly devastating. These things have to be avoided at all costs, and too often are not.

Second, there’s a temptation, the first time you disagree with a church member or leader about something, to transfer them from the ally list to the enemy list I think that’s both unwise and beneath the calling of an undershepherd. The person who disagrees with you on this issue today may be your strongest ally on the next thing that arises in a couple of months. If you make the mistake I’ve just described, pretty soon in any ministry your list of allies is going to be short and your list of enemies is going to be long (and wrong).

Third, I think sometimes we as pastors are tempted not to be nearly patient enough while leading our congregations. The Fruit of the Spirit is patience, right? There are things about which I’m passionate in the area of ecclesiology that represent fairly major changes. In the midst of discussions about these things, one of my dear church members asked me, “Brother Bart, do you plan to do this right away, or…like…a year from now.” I said to her, “Dear sister, I’m a history student: A year from now IS right away to my brain.” Plodding like that (to borrow William Carey’s word for it) may not put somebody on the cover of a magazine, but I’ve found it to be a way to help a church to make lasting changes with a minimal amount of turmoil and division. Recognizing when your congregation is ready for you to hurry and when they appreciate your careful plodding is an important ministry skill, I think. Knowing when to charge ahead anyway, even if people are uncomfortable, is something that rises all the way to the level of genius, probably. I think the situations in which the stakes are that high are fewer than we often acknowledge.

SBC Today:  Who are two or three of our “heroes in ministry”?

Bart Barber:  Steve Lemke, of course! But so as not to embarrass you unduly, I’ll come up with a couple of different answers. So many people have loved me and helped me along the way. I’ll leave people out I don’t want to leave out.

This year I preached the funeral sermon of Lawrence M. Cox. He was my mother’s pastor when my father was attending her church in the hopes of securing my mother’s attention. He wasn’t there long, but he left enough of an impression that my family kept up with him. I got to know him when I finished college. By that time he was a Director of Missions in a local association in Oklahoma. God used him to bring me to a church in his association where I was serving when I first began to attend SWBTS. I loved Lawrence and always looked up to him. He poured himself out into me. I’m so thankful. He was faithful throughout his ministry. Nobody has affected me more. My Baptist convictions and my passion for theology I owe mostly to him and to my father (who, in turn, owed a lot of his theological passion to Lawrence’s early influence).

Wayne Sanders became my pastor during my adolescent years in Lake City, AR. His sons and I became fast friends (a lot of the time, the three of us WERE the youth group). Together, we made fun of him a lot. He spoke an interesting dialect of Mississippian. But my patient, gentle mode of pastoral leadership I now realize I received as much from him as from any other human being on the planet.

Paige Patterson has become an unexpected hero and influence upon me. Unexpected because I was nearly finished with my Ph.D. before I ever met him, and I started out predisposed to be afraid of him and not to like him very much. Growing up in Northeast Arkansas, I was vaguely aware that somebody named Patterson was somehow involved with the biblical inerrancy movement in the Southern Baptist Convention. In that area of the world, the absolute center of the Conservative Resurgence was Adrian Rogers, not Paige Patterson or Paul Pressler. Infallible statements in my early church life came not ex catehdra but ex Cordova (from Adrian Rogers at Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, TN).

At Baylor I received my indirect introduction to Paige Patterson, and no picture was of him was ever painted in Waco that didn’t feature horns and a pitchfork. Constantly I heard that it was OK that I was conservative, because I wasn’t the Paige Patterson type of conservative. I wasn’t mean-spirited. I didn’t eat stir-fried babies for breakfast. I’ve got to say, I generally bought their characterization of Paige Patterson. I was disappointed when SWBTS hired Dr. Patterson. It was an ingrained part of my self-identity that I was not a Paige Patterson type of conservative.

What undid this impression entirely was something that the architects of that depiction simply could not anticipate or control: I met Paige Patterson. I met him and I found him to be more loving than I am, more passionate for the gospel than I am, unbelievably intelligent, and extremely gracious. He disarmed me from the start, changing my answer to this question. Because they had slandered him so entirely, they created the conditions in which I was able to grow to appreciate him so much.

What has cemented forever that newfound positive impression of Dr. Patterson has been the experience of disagreeing with him on a thing or two. He’s not perfect—he doesn’t always see the great wisdom of my opinions. But I’ve not found him to be the kind of person who has moved me from the friend list to the enemy list (to borrow from the previous question).

Let me salvage Dr. Patterson’s reputation by clarifying that I’m not any sort of a confidant to Dr. Patterson. We encounter one another maybe five or six times a year, almost entirely at official functions when large numbers of other people are around. But you don’t have to spend every day with Dr. Patterson to appreciate the history-changing legacy of what he has accomplished in the SBC.

I wish I could list twenty people instead of two or three. O.S. Hawkins has touched me personally as much as anybody in SBC life. When I was really, truly hurting, he called me a dozen times to check on me and my family. I’ll never forget that. I’d almost vote for Satan as president of the SBC if Dr. Hawkins personally asked me to do so. Jim Richards is doing something visionary at the SBTC that genuinely excites me for the future of state convention life, and I’m thankful to have what I would even call a budding friendship with him (a word that I use sparingly, so as not to cheapen it). I could go on for a long, long time. But I’ll stop there.

SBC Today:  What is the toughest lesson that you’ve learned in ministry?

Bart Barber:  That I’m really not that great at it.

Like I said before, God called me to preach when I was eleven. I lived in an area that was pretty rural, by most standards of comparison. I was the only boy-preacher around, and I was a National Merit Scholar to boot. I was pretty certain that I was really something.

Well, I know better now. Ministry will humble you if you stick with it long enough. There are a lot of people in pastoral ministry who are just better at it than I am, and I mean better at every aspect of it. I aspire to improve, but some of them I’ll just never catch.

That was a depressing realization at times. And yet, there are 42,000 churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, give or take. What keeps me going is my belief that I’m not the 42,001st worst pastor in the SBC. That means that there’s a church out there somewhere that needs me.

SBC Today: What is your approach to preaching?

Bart Barber:  Preaching is relational to me. I really have trouble preaching anywhere other than behind my pulpit and in front of my congregation. If I don’t know the people to whom I’m preaching, I really struggle to do it. I’ve got to feel them connected to this three-way conversation.

I plan my preaching in advance, and I carefully monitor whether there are books of the Bible or genres of material that I’ve been avoiding. I have a responsibility to declare the whole counsel of God to my congregation, and I know that I have the inclination (I think we all do) to remain in the areas of the Bible that I like the most and understand the best. I’m thankful to be able to say that in my time at FBC Farmersville, I’ve preached at least once out of every book of the Bible.

I’ve been helped greatly by the text-driven approach to preaching. Text-driven expository preaching is the type of preaching to which I aspire. I don’t know how well I always accomplish it. I think I’m improving. I’d like to be good at it before God retires my jersey.

SBC Today:  How do you help your congregation to focus on missions?

Bart Barber:  FBC Farmersville has a heart for missions. They had it before I ever got there. For a church of around 300 in average Sunday School attendance, I think they’re doing a great job. We’re an Acts 1:8 Challenge church. We’re joining the Embrace emphasis. In the past decade we’ve been in Cuba, Haiti, Great Britain, Kenya, Thailand, mainland China, Macau, and American Samoa. We’re a 10% Cooperative Program church and we plan to stay that way. We gave over $32,000 through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering last year. We’re trying to help in planting a church in Montana, and we had a very effective mission trip to Laredo, TX, this year.

I love all of that. Because of this church, my life is counting more for the Great Commission now than it ever has before. That’s a gift that they’ve given to me. I’ve served churches before where I wanted that to be the case, but the church wouldn’t embrace that vision. I served at one church that gave nothing through the Cooperative Program. I tried, in the best way I knew, to lead them to join the CP vision, but they had been poisoned against it. I left there.

Direct involvement in missions really does fuel a church’s passion for missions. I try to make sure that the congregation is being stretched to try some new, sometimes riskier, things. That’s healthy for a congregation.

I’m worried about the decline of missions education in Southern Baptist life. I don’t know the answer to the implosion of the institutions that previously helped churches to accomplish this task. Involvement in missions has become our missions education program. We have family mission trips. It is important to me to have times when the Barber family is walking down a street together distributing gospel information and sharing the gospel where we can. I want my kids to see me doing that, and I want to see them doing it.

SBC Today:  What are the most important doctrinal issues that the church will struggle with in the next few decades?

Bart Barber:  Antinomianism poses a graver threat to the SBC than any other doctrinal issue. I know that historically antinomianism has been associated with Calvinism, but I think that the chief exporter of antinomianism to our churches is the culture. Ours is an antinomian culture that has come to antinomian convictions without having any soteriology whatsoever.

It bewilders me to hear people say that the we face some dire threat in the form of legalism. Really? With our divorce rates? With 80% of our True Love Waits graduates involved in premarital sex? With our pornography problem? With our materialism? With our alcoholism and drug abuse? With the paltry rate of giving in the life of most Christians? With the way our Christian parents conduct themselves at their children’s sporting events? These are legalists? The great cloud of witnesses gasps when we say such a thing.

The hit counts at SBC Today make it clear that Calvinism is a big issue today and is continuing to trend upward as a big doctrinal issue. I think Limited Atonement is theology that arises from elsewhere than the Bible, but I’ve got to say that many of the people calling themselves Calvinists today are not much more Calvinistic than were Andrew Fuller and William Carey. Part of what is being lost in this discussion today, I think, is that Calvinism has become more popular as a label. The person who affirms three points and is waffling about on the fourth is somebody who twenty years ago would not have self-identified as a Calvinist but would be likely to do so today. People like that have been at the forefront of historic Baptist efforts with regard to missions and evangelism. But they haven’t been people veering toward antinomianism or toward the hyper-Calvinism of John Gill. Andrew Fuller, for example, was the explicit opponent of both.

Even among those who affirm five points, I confess a great admiration for, for example, Mark Dever and the people at 9 Marks. They’ve contributed as much as anybody else to the encouraging discussions about ecclesiology in our convention. I disagree with them about how many kinds of elders there are in a New Testament church (indeed, we even disagree about whether we disagree about this!), but I thank God for them.

The removal of the word “Baptist” from the names of our churches is not an insignificant matter. Our moving toward not being Baptist in any meaningful sense is certainly a significant doctrinal development that will continue to unfold over the next few decades. Whether it becomes a doctrinal issue inducing a struggle will largely depend upon whether many people find it important enough to struggle over it and make it an issue.

SBC Today:  How do you balance ministry and family responsibilities?

Bart Barber:  We homeschool. That makes an enormous difference. My wonderful wife Tracy has a Master of Science in Elementary Education degree. When she was teaching professionally, we found that my church-related schedule and her school-related schedule were at odds with one another. Homeschooling allows us to adapt the schedule of the entire family to the schedule of the church.

My kids are eight and five. We’ll see how long that works.

I try to involve my wife and my kids in ministry. My kids go with me to make hospital visits sometimes. They go with me to visit people in nursing homes. I don’t see this as something unfairly imposed upon them by my being a pastor. My Dad wasn’t a pastor, but he took me with him almost every Sunday when he taught his nursing home Sunday School class. They don’t do this all of the time, but they do it a lot.

I go home for lunch some. I stay home for dinner a lot. I’m generally a phone call away from the house when they need me. When I have to travel out-of-town as a pastor, I often drive and take my family with me.

Maybe the most significant thing I’ve done is to stay at this church. Some churches foolishly push their pastors away from their families. FBC Farmersville hasn’t done that.

SBC Today:  What do you do for fun?

Bart Barber:  Learning new things is fun for me. I have a pilot’s license, although if God had intended for man to fly, He would have given him more money. I can program in C#.NET, PHP, and a smidgen of Javascript here and there. I’m really interested in nuclear physics—I can tell you a lot about the Teller-Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons. I play the guitar (OK), the banjo (less OK), and the mandolin (not for public consumption).

I’d rather preach to this congregation than anything else, I guess. It’s a real blessing to get to do what you love to do.

SBC Today:  What are your two or three favorite TV shows? Movies?

Bart Barber:  TV Shows: The Andy Griffith Show, Nova, and Monk.
Movies: O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Gods and Generals, and Patton

SBC Today:  Thank you, Bart. We’re grateful for young pastors such as yourself you model a strong Baptist identity and a focus on evangelism and missions in your churches!

Fred Luter is Pastor of the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, Louisiana, and a possible nominee for President of the SBC at the Convention in New Orleans next year.

SBC Today:  What do you think are the greatest challenges confronting the SBC?

Fred Luter: I believe the greatest challenge confronting the SBC is to not get side-tracked from our main Biblical mandate and that is to carry out the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.  We have been commissioned by our Lord to win this lost world to a saving knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. All of the churches in this great convention must do our best to “make the main thing the main thing”!

SBC Today: What do you see as the greatest opportunities opening to the SBC?

Fred Luter:  The greatest opportunity opening to the SBC is that the Bible is still true and accurate when it says, “the harvest is truly plentiful”! Our communities, our cities, our country, our world is full of lost people. Consequently, our convention has the greatest opportunity to make the greatest impact for the Kingdom of God. We can literally see Acts 1:8 become a reality in a powerful way in our lifetime. Wow, what a revival that would be for our convention, for our nation and for our world!

SBC Today: Some of your friends (including me) have encouraged you to allow your name to be presented as President of the SBC next year in New Orleans. Where are you on that right now?

Fred Luter: I am about 85 percent sure I will allow my name to be nominated for SBC president. There still are a few people that I respect and admire that I need to hear their counsel. I truly desire the prayers of the saints of God during this time of decision and direction for my life and ministry.

SBC Today: As you look back now, what was the main key in your leading Franklin Avenue Baptist Church from being a small congregation with just a few dozen people to now being one of the largest churches in Louisiana?

Fred Luter:  FABC’s growth had a lot to do with just taking God at HIS Word. Jesus said that if He was lifted up He would draw all men unto Himself. One of the things that FABC is not ashamed of is that we all agree that it is “not about the pastor, but about the Master.” It is “not about the singing, but about the Savior.” It is “not about the leaders but about the Lamb of God.”  We have simply lifted up Jesus in everything we do.

SBC Today:  What are the greatest hindrances preventing some African Americans from attending SBC churches?

Fred Luter:  I think the hindrances about more African Americans attending SBC churches is simply because (1) our members need to do a better job of inviting them, and (2) once they come we must do all we can to make them feel that they are welcome to not only attend our churches but also to get involved in our churches.

SBC Today:  What is it that well-intentioned Southern Baptists don’t “get” about African Americans and the church?

Fred Luter:   I believe it is the same thing that can be a problem with our Anglo churches — music, music, music! Music is major in every African American church. The style of music has a lot to do with who we are and how we worship.

SBC Today:  Who are two or three of our “heroes in ministry”?

Fred Luter:  Two of my mentors are the late Dr. E.K. Bailey of Concord Missionary Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas; and Dr. Tony Evans of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship of Dallas, Texas. They have taught me so much about ministry.

SBC Today:  What are the keys to being a faithful/effective/successful pastor?

Fred Luter:  Three keys to being an effective pastor are: Love and commitment to God, love and commitment to your family, and love and commitment to the church where you serve.

SBC Today:  What is one key mistake that you see pastors and/or church staff members making that causes them problems in their churches?

Fred Luter:     The mistake that pastors and staff members make is not developing a genuine Christian relationship with each other. When that relationship is established it is easier to communicate when difficult and/or trying times come.

SBC Today:  What is the toughest lesson you have learned in ministry?

Fred Luter:  My toughest lesson learned in ministry is that sometimes the people closest to you can hurt you the most. There is a Judas in every church!!

SBC Today:  You’re now working with your son as a church staff member. How is that working out?  What have you both learned through it?

Fred Luter:  Working with my son Chip has been an answer to prayer for me.  My Mom and Dad were divorced when I was 6 years old, so I never had a father growing up in my home. Over twenty-seven years ago when Chip was born I asked God to pour into my son’s life of how important it was to have a genuine love for God through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. God honored that prayer and then some! My son is not only a committed believer but God also called him into the ministry. Chip was two years old when I became pastor at FABC so the members are also proud of him. What we have learned is that our Father/Son relationship truly helps our Pastor/Staff member relationship!!

SBC Today:  How do you balance ministry and family responsibilities?

Fred Luter:  Make it known to your congregation that your wife and family is your first priority. Then put actions to your words by spending quality time with your wife and family.

SBC Today:  What do you do for fun?

Fred Luter:  My fun time is spent watching and participating in sports, particularly football and basketball. WHO DAT talking ‘bout beating dem Saints!!!

SBC Today:  Is it true that Krispy Kreme donuts are your greatest temptation?

Fred Luter:  In defense of my waistline I refuse to admit that Krispy Kreme donuts is my greatest temptation!!