Confessions of a Minister

By Ray Frazier

In this gentle and positive confessional, longtime Baptist minister Ray Frazier explains his conclusions about faith, the church, and world religions. He bases these conclusions first and foremost on the Christmas angel's announcement: peace and good will to all people. His book is not a spicy reveal of juic

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: May 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638372226

Ray Frazier

Ray Frazier was the last of eight children of a North Carolina tobacco farmer. He received his master's and doctorate degrees from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Ray has served as pastor to five Baptist congregations and as Intentional Interim Minister or traditional interim minister to ten congregations. He has served in Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. He is a registered parliamentarian and has received training as a personal coach. Ray has authored nine other works, primarily devotions and Bible studies, as well as Sunday School materials for the Baptist Sunday School Board and for Smyth and Helwys. Ray and his wife Sandy married in 1967, and live in Wilmington, North Carolina. They have two children and two grandchildren.

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Preface

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ver half a century in the Baptist pastoral ministry has challenged and has grown my outlook about many religious kinds of things. I perceive a need, for my own sake, to put down in writing the outlooks that I have now about religion. It is my hope and prayer that, for others' sakes also, these pages will find their way into the hands and hearts of those who face or have faced similar religious growth challenges.

Many thinking people grow into dubious questions. Should we entertain these questions and risk asking being personally rebuffed? We also grow into conclusions that put us in an unfavorable light with people that we want to get along with. This book is about those questions and those conclusions as I have experienced them.

Why write such a book? Because it's therapy for the writer, and because it may help someone who is walking a similar life path as regards dawning questions and conclusions. I am one of those who finds it therapeutic to put my thoughts and struggles down on paper in black and white. Without a doubt, that is one motivation that first gave rise to these pages.

I dare to believe, however, that my experience is not unique, and that this work may help someone. First, it may enable some to find focus and definition for developing their own grownup ideas about religion. Doing our own thinking usually meets with resistance which we must learn to cope with.

Second, I hope to empower the courage and resolve to pursue personal, honest, religious questions and conclusions.

The realities of church life force private struggles for many of us who choose to stay in the church, both ministers and lay people. When we struggle with maintaining integrity, we discover truths that we had no idea of in the early years of our Christian pilgrimage. This work confesses those struggles and their outcome to this point in time, in the faith that it will encourage and shed light on the path for others.

Acknowledgements

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any thanks are due to numerous individuals whose counsel and example made this work possible.

Rev. Bob Morrison reviewed a very early draft of these thoughts quite a while back, when I was just beginning to think of sharing these conclusions. His input was very helpful.

Dr. Paul Burgess reviewed the latest draft. He was exceedingly thorough in sharing enlightening insights, and I'm grateful.

In addition to these two, there have been others along the way who for years have given me encouragement and guidance in growing an honest and legitimate Christian faith. Some of these saints were aware they were encouraging me in this vein; some were just being themselves – living out their Christlikeness.

I certainly could not have arrived today at the understandings I have, were it not for good and godly interaction with these special people along the way.

Introduction

He that has seen both sides of fifty has lived to little purpose if he has not other views of the world than he had when he was much younger.¹ William Cowper

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he journey transforms the traveler, as education transforms the student. The professor aims not only to impart facts or a degree; she aims to prompt a short-sighted youth to become a life-long seeker, a student of life. Similarly, the religious journey prompts the believer not only to learn facts or to get to heaven, but to discover an adult self beyond childish understandings, to expand the horizons of religious convictions.

From my own religious journey, in these pages I'd like to: (1) speak from within the Christian faith family; (2) share some questions and embarrassments, and also some conclusions and convictions; and (3) share the world peace vision that good religion creates.

I'm calling these confessions because many people of strong and authentic faith have arrived at other conclusions and convictions. These pages might also be considered a confession of faith, or a statement of faith. This is who I have come to be. These are some of the subjects and issues that I have dealt with along the way; I've made no effort to include all the subjects and issues in a pastor's life.

I certainly have not finished the course,² as Paul said. On the other hand, it was over half a century ago that I was baptized at nine years of age. Hopefully, I have achieved some grasp of the ambiguities and complexities of religious issues. Some issues relate to sad realities in my Baptist denomination and also in the larger religious community. I've tried to speak about these realities with an appropriate balance of honesty and restraint: forthright, yet kind. I've also wanted to maintain a positive tone, grateful to be able to relate growing experiences and stories about some godly people I've met along the way.

Many inside the church choose to stay blind to embarrassing realities about religion. They gravitate to warm and fuzzy notions of faith. Many others who acknowledge those realities sound like they are outside the church, with no personal stake in religion. They speak or write with an academic sterility that does not inspire. A median stance between those two extremes is difficult, but that's my goal. I intend to recognize the realities from a stance of loving the church and remaining committed to it.

In William Cooper's train of thought, having seen both sides of fifty, I surely have different views of the world and of religion than I had decades ago.

Beginnings

When friends enter a home, they sense its personality and character, the family's style of living—these elements make a house come alive with a sense of identity, a sense of energy, enthusiasm, and warmth, declaring, this is who we are; this is how we live.³ Ralph Lauren

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n order to communicate a sense of present personality and character, it's helpful to take note of earlier styles of living: a person's sense of identity decades ago. That backdrop lends light and meaning when today we declare that this is who we are; this is how we live.

I grew up with models of genuineness that fostered integrity, encouraged me to be an honest person, and taught regard for others. You might say that I had a cornfield upbringing that instilled a kind of intentional naïveté, and I've come to see that as a blessing and a strength. Looking back now, I appreciate my heritage. As Joe Diffie used to sing, my footsteps carry me away, but in my mind I'm always goin’ home.⁴ For me, home was a good place to be; I had a good send off.

My father was born in 1891 and had a fourth grade education. He fought in the army in France in WWI, and was a deacon. He taught me how to bait a hook, make a bow from a hickory sapling, and an arrow from a reed, a nail, and a chicken feather. He showed me how to distinguish an abandoned squirrel's nest from one currently in use. He was a strong man, stern, at times harsh, with military bearing and outlook. He farmed tobacco and sent each of his eight children as far as we wanted to go in school.

He also had a warm side. I know that rituals don't last long for growing children, but for a time I had a ritual at the end of my day. Just before I ran off the bed I would run up to Daddy, hug his neck, and say so fast you couldn't understand the words, Good night; sleep tight; don't let the bed bugs bite! The warm part is remembering his strong brown arms wrapped around me for just an instant. I was safe, protected, cherished. I'm grateful to live life with these and other memories of my father.

Mama was born in 1901, had more education than most in her day, and was our family's peacemaker. Her father managed a sawmill and moved sometimes twice a year. When she went to boarding school, she paid five dollars a month for room, board, and fifteen meals each week. As Mama said, you could buy a whole heap with five dollars then. As a girl, Mama knew that some people eat chitlins. She said that when she and Papa began to get serious about each other, she was much relieved to learn that his family didn't eat chitlins.

Times were not easy for Mama on the farm or in the family, but the one quote I and my sisters and brothers remember most from Mama's lips is, we've got so much to be thankful for. Her character and personality made good and indelible impressions on dozens of people. Often I think I perceive a bit of her temperament in mine, and that's a good feeling.

I was the last of eight children. My older brothers and sisters grew up during and after the depression that began in 1929. At an early age they worked on the farm like adults. My oldest brother worked in children's homes his entire adult career, and I've heard his testimony about our heritage. He said that some of the children who came to live in the children's home came from well to do families. Those kids had everything imaginable … except what was important. My brother said that the eight of us, on the other hand had absolutely nothing … except what was important. Mama and Papa loved us, worked hard, and worried about keeping all the wheels turning so that we kids didn't know what worry was while we were children.

Most of my grade school and high school classmates lived on family owned and operated farms. White, lower class and lower middle class Baptists were about the only people I was aware of. One of my boyhood classmates attended the Christian church. He teased me that he was a Christian and that I, as a Baptist, wasn't a Christian.

We made our own toys back then. On Sundays we didn't work or shoot guns. Today there are no family farms in my home community. There are people other than Baptists there, and even the Baptists aren't what they used to be. People buy their toys. A lot of people shoot guns, mow the grass, or do anything else on any day of the week. I too do more things on Sunday now than I used to.

Mama lived to be 103 years old, and she used to say, People talk about the good old days. I was there, and I don't want to go back. I'm not sure whether things are better now, or worse. It's just that the world is a very different place.

I came to young adulthood without many academically accomplished skills in philosophy or biblical interpretation. I'm the guy who asked the stupid questions in theology class. People like me are the ones who do in fact need to go around asking what's really going on here, because we may perceive a bit more slowly than some others.

Somewhere along the way I heard that J. C. Penny was asked what the secret of his success was. He responded, I go around asking a lot of dumb fool questions.⁵ From what I know of J. C. Penney as a businessman of Christian integrity, his are good footsteps. So I've ceased to be embarrassed about asking stupid questions in religion and elsewhere. It's better to be open to all the questions than to presume that we have all the answers.

Socrates supposedly wrote, To find yourself, think for yourself.⁶ Religion is not the only arena in which a lot of people are eager for us to approve their conclusions without our asking any questions or thinking for ourselves. In any event, I confess that it's become a lifestyle to go around asking a lot of questions, and insisting on drawing my own conclusions.

Befuddlement often precedes knowledge. When we are courageous and transparent enough to acknowledge that we're baffled, then we've taken the first giant step toward wisdom and understanding. I've had the privilege to know a lot of befuddlement in my life. I've also had the privilege to discover a few answers, and to encounter some modern-day saints.

Our pastor, Rev. Crate Jones, was a saint who had a major impact on us teens. Ten or fifteen of us gathered in his home about once a month on no regular basis. Always we concluded the evening as he led a devotional time and almost all of us prayed spoken prayers. Home and church activities surely influenced me greatly, but it was those times in our pastor's home that brought it all into focus. Those experiences are one essential ingredient in who I am today.

It was years later that I realized how wise my pastor was. As he interacted with me about my possible call to ministry, he encouraged without pushing, and gave advice without saying too much. As a result, I've always had a sense of his joy and support of my decision to be a minister, but I've never thought that he maneuvered that decision in any way. I try to relate to others with that same balance of respect and encouragement.

When at eighteen I announced my intention to become a pastor, I received a few comments to the effect that they hoped college and seminary wouldn't change me. Nevertheless, even that early on I knew that I wanted to change. I knew just enough to know that I didn't know much, and needed to grow a lot. Professors at Mars Hill College and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary encouraged us to study honestly. They didn't spoon feed us or try to indoctrinate us, and I'll always be grateful for the philosophy of education that prevailed back then. I continue to appreciate that approach to learning.

At various times and places in Christian history and in contemporary times as well, what passes for education is actually indoctrination, especially in religious circles. I recall a cartoon of a seminary professor passing out sheets of paper to his class and saying, On the front side is your assigned research topic, and on the back side is the conclusion you will reach.

Yes, that kind of thing does indeed happen in some Baptist institutions. I've also heard the horror stories of young people who supposedly announce that they want to be ministers, then lose their faith when they go to school. Blaming the school for that is like blaming your nutritionist for the unhealthy diet you choose. College and seminary stretched me, at times painfully. I needed that and it was fulfilling.

At Mars Hill College I met a wonderful young lady. Sandy is my anchor. Her love and life merge with mine. A bunch of us preachers were talking once, and I shared the opinion that of the two of us, Sandy is the more religious. Over half the other preachers agreed immediately about their wives' religion as well.

Religiously as well as in other ways we two have become one. Her family and her individual character were such that when she was still a child her church leaders told her that she would be a minister's wife someday. We dated through college, married the month after we graduated, and went off to seminary. In a few months, as a first year seminary student, I was called to my first pastorate.

I. Basic Confessions

Okay, so what's really going on?

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hat's what they asked one another frequently during the sharing sessions. Our college daughter worked one summer as a counselor in a home for recovering addicts. She facilitated informal interaction groups in which the residents related their stories: the circumstances of their addiction, the downward slide, hitting bottom, how they started back up again, that kind of thing. Frequently after someone finished sharing their first story, someone else responded with, okay, we hear what you're saying. Now tell us what's really happening with you.

The obvious insinuation was that there was something more, something bubbling beneath the surface. Sometimes they made a sincere but shallow attempt to acknowledge what really happened. In other cases, they deliberately attempted to mask what was really going on. I've seen both those scenarios and still others in religion. We tell our stories with various shades of integrity. Behind all the stuff we put out there for others to see, the real priorities and the real issues sometimes lie somewhere deeper: something other than what is actually said. So what's really going on?

That question stays as close as a heartbeat. I ask it often in the privacy of my own thoughts; it's become a part of my instinctive consciousness as a pastor. It seems to be a welcome encouragement to some; others seem to resent the intrusion into their neat, artificial stories. I get the denominational party line, but what's really going on?

When I hear the conversations, I can spell and define the words, and the sentences are logical enough. But the ideas I hear expressed are not always in sync with the motivations I intuit. I wonder, what's this conversation really about? The incongruity between the spoken and the unspoken suggests something more, something bubbling down beneath what's flowing visibly on the surface. I've been glad to find kindred spirits along the way: others who have been asking similar questions and finding similar answers to what's really happenig.

In research, whether it's about genetics, archaeology, or chemistry, we want to go to original sources. We're not satisfied with copies of copies or with guesstimates. We can't accept stock answers without reliable verification. Humanity's past successes and failures keep showing up in successive generations just like skin color or stature. Therefore we find it reasonable, not overly guarded, to ask continually, what's really going on?

This honest researching outlook is as necessary in religion as it is in any other branch of inquiry. The truth can be found only by unflinching honesty that realistically and effectively distinguishes between the popular and the actual, between the assumption and the reality. There are a lot of superbly Christlike people in ministry. There are also some clowns and pompous egos. I've wanted to search out real and Christlike people both in the pulpit and in the pew: people who are transparent, honest, vulnerable. By God's grace it's not difficult to find those good people.

Jesus was good at discerning the truth beneath appearances. When Peter asked him how often he should forgive someone, Jesus perceived instantly what was really going on. He said in effect, come on, man! Get real! You have been an unforgiving person, and what's really happening here is that you're trying to justify your judgmental attitude. Get a forgiving heart, brother! He had been teaching them to be forgiving people. Peter, still majorly self-centered, was looking for some way to be religious but still remain unforgiving at heart.⁷

Devious is not an unfair word to apply to Peter or to some who claim to be religious today. Like Peter, we certainly wouldn't explain it that way but like Peter we are tempted to use religion to legitimize our chosen ways of speaking and acting. We want to be religious without being religious. Often that's what's really going on.

Religious conversations sometimes revolve around the what's the most important thing in religion question. Often the most important thing is not the obvious or what's presented up front. Some say it's love. Some say it's believing the Bible. Some say it's Christlikeness.

Some would never say it out loud but for them the most important thing is to get you and me to knuckle under to their religious authority and conclusions. Sometimes when we figure out what's really happening, we choose to just continue the charade: fit in and get along. We play whatever role will win for us acceptance and appreciation. Maybe we're tired of sorting out all the incongruities. Maybe we grow less concerned about truthfulness and transparency as the years go by. Maybe we're just plain devious.

The following pages relate some conclusions and convictions of a career pastor from inside the crucible of America's largest Protestant denomination, the Baptists. For me it has indeed been a spiritual crucible. In the current American religious context these conclusions do indeed amount to confessions in two ways. First and most importantly, these conclusions and convictions are in fact a positive confession of faith. This is how I perceive true religion. Secondly, some who see true religion differently may see in these pages a negative sort of confession, as a suspect confesses to a crime.

Christians of a traditional mindset will find some non-traditional thoughts here. Independent thinkers will find some beliefs worded in traditional language. Non-Baptists will note that I've spent my whole life in the Baptist scheme of things. But I'm one of those Baptists who is open to and sincerely appreciative of other faiths. I believe that's the smarter and more godly approach.

I've intended to explain my convictions and conclusions based on what's really happening, both in my own personal religious life and in larger religious contexts as well. From my ministerial beginnings I've desired to be my own person and to be appreciative of other persons. That desire has not pleased everybody; nevertheless, it has grown stronger through the years.

One essential confession is that my desire to fit in has continually decreased through the years. I am in harmony with Dr. King's observation that the need of the hour is for people who are creatively maladjusted.⁸ That's a lovely term that describes a dynamite concept. Most anywhere we go we can find nonconformists and groups who share that religious individualism. Still my Protestant denomination propagates strong forces to conform to herd thinking.

These forces are at work all along the theological spectrum; every group uses them either intentionally or otherwise. This is normal and natural. Human beings are naturally insecure and uncertain, so we want others to think like us. Their thinking like us validates our thinking. In addition to wanting this affirmation, our desire to please and win approval often blunts our readiness to think for ourselves. Many of us came into ministry to begin with at least in part because we have a strong desire to win endorsement from others.

Like a deep sea submersible, we're under heavy pressure. As pastors seek contacts and inroads into an organizational network that can reward us with larger congregations and more important pulpits, we get unrelenting pressures to conform to the party line: to think and speak correctly. We might say this is the pressure from above. From below, at the level of the lay person, popular preaching gets bigger salary increases than does prophetic preaching. That reality is too heavy to ignore.

Some ministers seem to be able to juggle the forces and pressures while maintaining personal religious integrity; those I admire and applaud. It's been a constant struggle, in my experience, to accomplish this juggling act while ministering with integrity in a system that rewards compliant behavior.

Since my earliest recollections I've wanted to be the same person on Sunday that I am the other six days of the week. Easier said than done. It's tough to be transparent and sincere in matters of religion, and especially so for a pastor. Denominational winds and congregational tides are not kind to a minister who wants to stay anchored in Christian integrity.

That may be a shock to some; it came as a surprise to me at first. But there are a lot of us who strive for this transparency and integrity. Some of us are clerics; others are lay people. The more I perceive about what's really going on, the more I wonder at my naiveté of years ago. My prayer and desire is that these confessions will encourage readers to be real people, the same religious persons all seven days of every week, transparent, sincere. That's what's really going on in the pages ahead.

We'll consider eight religious points of view that I consider to be foundational, overarching conclusions that help to determine the other points of view that follow these eight. I'm not attempting to present a comprehensive overview of all that is important in religion. Rather these are some points at which my own faith has grown through the years.

1. My God Was Too Small

A tiny God, confined in the tiny cup of our tiny understanding, is in fact no God at all.

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e are fortunate if we come to understand that our God is too little. This outlook delivers us as an infant is delivered from diapers or a child is delivered from bicycle training wheels. This is a foundational religious perspective. The diapers or training wheels are a normal stage in the growth and development of normal children, but not many people stay imprisoned in such a stage forever. Our first ideas about God are small because of our limited comprehension; it's not that God himself is small. Years ago, I bought into the idea that J. B. Phillips presented in his book, Your God is Too Small. That was on target for me.

Early on, perhaps while still a teenager, I came to be suspicious of those who talk loud and long about their religion being the only true religion and their God being the only true God. It sounds like they are trying to convince themselves. It sounds like they worship a little God of a small number of people. They make it sound like God favors their country over other countries, their culture over others. I concluded early that I wanted a bigger God than the one I was hearing about from some people.

Then I noticed with surprise that some who were not active church members at all acted like they were very much in touch with God. They didn't sing the hymns and talk the talk, but they were like Christ: Christlike. Historically this included some American heroes of times past. In my experience now this includes some people who leave the church, disgusted with church spats, but who still love the Lord and try to live godly lives.

In two congregations I discovered members who were minimally active in the church, but who in the past had been major leaders and very active. In both cases these people seemed to me to have been turned off by childishness in congregational quarrels. As a result, they backed off from the church but not from God. In one case they had been close friends with a pastor who had been treated badly, so they resolved not to get emotionally close to another pastor. It's a sad state of affairs that I believe is not all that unusual in church life in America. Apparently, these good people conceive of a God who is bigger than their church spats. I do too.

Paul drew a helpful analogy. He said that the Jewish religious laws were a beginning point to direct their attention