Open and Closed Doors

By Larry L McSwain

Writing about oneself can be a self-centered experience. Yet there is something therapeutic and responsible in the act of engaging in reflection about one's life. As I write these words, I am living in the eighth decade of life and I am forced to self-examination as the driving forces of achievement diminish into the question, "Was what I did wi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Parson's Porch
• Release date: Oct 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781960326584

Book preview

Introduction

When a door closes, knock on it a few times. But if it still doesn’t open, let it stay closed. In career, in love, in LIFE—when you see the period at the end of the sentence, don’t try and turn it into a comma. Know when something is over and move on.¹

Writing about oneself can be a self-centered experience. Yet there is something therapeutic and responsible in the act of engaging in reflection about one’s life. As I write these words, I am living in the eighth decade of life and I am forced to self-examination as the driving forces of achievement diminish into the question, Was what I did with my life worth the struggles and hard work to make a difference in the world in which I lived?

My wife Sue and I spent twenty-seven years in Louisville, KY. I was a student in the Doctor of Sacred Theology (S.T.D.) program of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) for four years and served in faculty and administrative roles the remainder of those years. A well- known story from ethics professor Henlee Barnette was as follows. In the aftermath of the 1958 firing of thirteen professors by President Duke K. McCall, Henlee was appointed by McCall as the Acting Dean of the School of Theology. Professor Wayne Oates had grown up in similar mill villages in North Carolina and both had graduated from Wake Forest University. He made his way to Henlee’s office, walked in, and threw a package of Bull Durham chewing tobacco on his desk declaring, Don’t ever forget where you came from Henlee.

This personal life account with focus on another examination of the most divisive controversy in Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) history is my effort to follow Oates’s admonition. As I think about the dominant themes of my life, specific events emerge that give understanding of why a particular theme is important. Six realities are dominant in my story:

1) A stable childhood growing up in a rural Oklahoma environment.

2) An inescapable call from God that directed me into the vocation of Christian ministry.

3) Meeting and marrying Rebecca Sue Stidham who has been an equal partner in our marriage and family. Our two children Laura and Mike, their spouses Charles and Kelli, and grandchildren Hannah, Dillon, Joshua, Luke, and Dean have been highlights of our lives.

4) Serving as a professor and administrator at SBTS before and during the explosive years of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) fragmentation.

5) Leading Shorter College as President and teaching in Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology.

6) Retiring in 2011 which allows me to use my time pretty much as I wish.

There were other places I worked and responsibilities I fulfilled, but they did not create the same degree of change that occurred for me, and my family as do these.

I am a generalist rather than a specialist. As I reflect on my life experiences, it is apparent I am primarily a responder to open doors. I have never been able to chart a specific path for the future which I would follow with the intention of making a particular impact. I admire people who have done that, but I seem incapable of that for myself. Consequently, I have done many different things. There have been times I felt like an academic with attention deficit disorder. I do not have the disposition to focus on one thing and spend a lifetime pursuing that one discipline. Whenever an idea pops in my head, I want to pursue it NOW. I am sure I would have been more productive as a writer if I could ever have focused on one major area and blocked out all of the distractions of competing opportunities or interests.

The way I would describe God’s providence in my life is found in the metaphor Jesus chose in John 10:1-18. He is the good shepherd who guides his sheep through the gate, door, entrance, opportunity into a place where they thrive and are protected from danger. My life has been one long series of open doors. None of the significant ones was planned by me. They happened. My choice was always whether to walk through them. Choosing which ones NOT to enter can be just as important.

Henri Nouwen compares the journey with God as a call to move closer by moving deeper in our relationship with God. To do so we must shut out that which detracts, an action he calls closing doors. Every time you close another door, he writes, be it the door of immediate satisfaction, the door of distracting entertainment, the door of business, the door of guilt and worry, or the door of self-rejection—you commit yourself to go deeper into your heart and thus deeper into the heart of God.²

One door opened that led us to travel across the country nine hundred miles from family for graduate study. After completing that journey our lives were planted in Louisville, KY where we enjoyed a community of learning in which life-long friends were experienced. We were destined to bear our children and raise them both to adulthood there. Sue was to be a major support for us as a high school business teacher, legal secretary, employee of the Internal Revenue Service, and working as a Certified Public Accountant with a big eight firm.

I was introduced to a cohort of amazing teachers, preachers, and administrators that included hundreds of students during twenty-three years of working through the professorial ranks to Professor. I was given the opportunity to serve as an administrator ranging from Assistant Director of Field Education to Provost.

We were blessed to enjoy two years of sabbatical leave that introduced us and our children to diverse cultures as we lived in Berkeley, CA and Houston, TX. We travelled extensively those two years as well as later years enjoying experiences we could have never imagined. It was natural then that I became involved in the SBC controversy as a behind-the-scenes activist from 1981 until 1991. I joined the Moderates resisting the efforts of Judge Paul Pressler and Criswell Bible Institute president Paige Patterson and a host of others to reshape the SBC. They and the network they developed used the dogma of the inerrancy of the Bible to reform the images of SBC seminaries and agencies into an ideology of Fundamentalism. That transformation as it effected the six theological schools supported by the SBC was completed by 1991. After becoming one of the warriors of resistance to the movement, President Roy L. Honeycutt led in a negotiation with the trustees to ensure inclusion of clearly identified conservative scholars for faculty additions with a document, Covenant Renewal Between Trustees, Faculty, and Administration. All three groups had supported the document as a framework for the future.

Roy Lee Honeycutt appointed me Provost of the Seminary during this period of denominational fragmentation. I committed myself to function as best I could within this framework. I said in my installation address:

The past decade has been a telling experience for Southern Baptists. Much of our energy has gone to the tasks of settling the question of whether conservative moderates or conservative fundamentalists would control the direction of the organized structures of the Southern Baptist Convention. Anyone who is unclear about the outcome of the decade of internecine warfare needs to take a high school course in political science. That fight is over. What we must realize is that the Southern Baptist Convention is bigger than its structures. Southern Baptists can be defined as a people, a collection of churches or as a convention. If we are to have a future of excellence without arrogance, we must focus who we are and what we do on being for Southern Baptists as a people a place that provides the finest theological education available for ALL Baptists—moderates and conservatives; rich and poor; educated and uneducated; African American; ethnic and Anglo; male and female.³

Within 13 months, Honeycutt and I would share in conversation related to the difficulties of achieving that vision. He communicated to me he would retire at the end of that year. I communicated to him I would be seeking a new calling elsewhere as I was able. I asked for his assistance in relocating to a new place of ministry. He was positive in his support.

That was more than thirty years ago. From that day forward, I sought to leave behind the rancor, maneuvering, and stress related to the controversy within the SBC. Another door opened through which Sue, and I walked together to serve as President of Shorter College in Rome, GA. We gave our best in that work for seven years to the point of fatigue that was unhealthy for both of us. I retired for a time to regain strength and focus. I resumed teaching students Christian Ethics and Leadership at the McAfee School of Theology in 2003, and was able to participate in supply preaching, develop consultation resources for congregations, administer the Doctor of Ministry program, and write extensively. After retirement in 2011, I completed my leadership book and worked with the Center for Healthy Churches as a consultant and coach.

There comes a time in life when one needs to clean out the attic. As I reviewed the boxes of materials from my work through the years, I realized how much of my attention had been given to the lost cause of the controversy within the SBC. There were stories to tell that had not been told and I decided to look back at the 1980s with an analytical eye. I have given considerable attention as a part of my ministry to the issue of conflict. From 1976 until 2018 I worked, mostly on weekends, with congregations as a conflict consultant. My friend William (Bill) Treadwell and I wrote two books together that sought to address processes for healthy conflict in local churches. We also worked together as trainers in conflict ministry with local ministry groups, Directors of Associations, and Home Mission Board staff. Many of my articles in Baptist news and various publications as well as a chapter in my last book focus on conflict. Additionally, the conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention became a dominant reality in my life, especially the years 1981-1993.

I sought to address the issues of that conflagration among the leadership of the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. in a variety of ways. I committed myself to personal involvement in the politics of the annual meetings of the SBC. I authored a few practical articles for the Baptist newspapers addressing conflict. I wrote more esoteric analyses of the controversy for presentations and publications.

It has been nearly thirty years since I left the primary arena of involvement in SBC issues. There is now a generation that knows little of the story. Maybe one more effort will offer some insights for future leaders of the Baptist world to lead in ways that are more reflective of the rule and reign of the God we all claim to follow.

A word to the reader. I have chosen to simplify the format of this work. It is not designed to reflect the standard academically accepted guides of style. I have placed the full documentation of footnoted material in the Bibliography for those who wish to engage in further research. Footnotes reflect only the author, title, and page number(s)

NOTES

¹A Facebook meme from Contemplative Monk posted by Guyeth Nash, March 11, 2022.

² Henri J. M. Nowen, The Inner Voice of Love, 51.

³ Larry L. McSwain, Excellence without Arrogance, 7.

Chapter One

Childhood

My parents were products of the Great Depression. My father, Joseph Kelly McSwain, dropped out of high school after his sophomore year. He said the depression was the reason. But his household was somewhat problematic. My Grandfather, who was born in 1858 and died in 1953, was married three times. He was from Estill County, Kentucky. His first wife died after delivering five children, two of whom died within a year of birth. He was married again in Lexington, KY and moved to Oklahoma. His second wife divorced him, but we have no records of the details. He wrote my grandmother in Kentucky, asked her to marry him (she was a distant cousin whom he knew), and when she said Yes sent her the money for a train ticket to Oklahoma. He met her at the train station in Enid, OK, and they got married. She was 19 and he was in his late 40s; he had children older than she. They had six children (who lived), and my father was third in birth order. Conflict between the first family and the second was common.

Dad quit school after the tenth grade. He went to Iowa and worked two years picking corn and living there with grandpa’s sister Sarah. He returned home and finished high school, the highest level of education he would attain. He started a business selling Chevrolets in our hometown of Pond Creek, OK in 1938, borrowing the money and going into business with his brother, Frank. He worked hard and barely survived until after WWII (he was never drafted) when he did well financially. He was elected mayor of Pond Creek at the age of 26, the youngest in the state.

My mother, Glorene May Brown, had an even more traumatic experience in the depression. Her mother’s family were prosperous farmers. Her father, Clarence J. Brown, had moved from Illinois to live with a sister near Nash, OK, when his sweetheart died. Glorene’s mother, Mabel Hayes, had been in love with a boy and for some reason the relationship was broken. She then married my grandfather, but he was never able to live up to her expectations. He sold machinery for the International Harvester Co., and they moved about every other year for the first dozen years of their marriage. When the depression hit full force in about 1930 or 1931, he lost his business. The family was forced to move to a shack near Grandmother Hayes’s home. There was no running water, an outdoor john, and beans were the usual fare of food during the years they lived there. My mother was the firstborn of five children. As the eldest, it fell to her to work long hours cooking and working around the house all through her school years. Her mother was a cold and emotionally distant woman, so she grew up with little emotional nurture. What she did get came from her father. Her siblings were A.C. Brown, a career Army man, June Brown Johnson, Rex Lee Brown, and Phyliss Brown Ewers. Mother was closest to her. I remember her wedding in the Christian Church in Nash, OK. She and her husband, Max, lived in Pond Creek where he worked for Dad for a time. They moved to Ponca City, and we had more interaction with cousins Janet, Judy, and Tony than any others on the Brown side of the family.

She compensated for her challenges by becoming involved in 4-H. She entered canned goods and sewing projects into the county fair and usually came home with the blue ribbon. I learned after her death at the age of 97 she had won a trip to Chicago her senior year for her 4-H work. A notebook she assembled to win the trip was in her personal belongings.

Shortly after moving to the shack, Mother’s Grandfather Hayes died, creating significant family conflict over his inheritance. Her mother inherited a quarter of land with a mortgage on it, and they moved into the homestead of her mother’s parents and out of the shack. Until his retirement and their move to town, my grandfather and their youngest, Rex Lee, farmed that land. Grandmother was the matriarchal controller of all finances and decisions.

My parents married August 26, 1939, in a small ceremony at the Baptist preacher’s home in Pond Creek, OK, with his brother Frank and sister Ruth attending. Neither of Mother’s parents nor any siblings attended her wedding. Her parents did provide her $10.00 to buy a dress! She had just finished high school and he was seven years older than she.

I was born 10 Nov. 1940 and by that time they had been able to buy a small house in our small town. I have a sister, Sharon Elaine, born two years later and a brother, Ricky Dean, born two years after that. They also lost another child by miscarriage. The earliest memory I have is of being awakened early in the morning as Dad put Sharon and me in the car to drive to Grandma McSwain’s as Rick was being born. That was June 13, 1944. All three of us were delivered by Dr. Deyoney at our house.

I lived in Pond Creek from birth until 1955. It had a population of over 1,200 people with a larger draw of another 600 living in a ten-mile radius. There were four grocery stores in the town, two pharmacies, a large hardware store, two dry goods stores, two variety stories, a movie theatre, two banks, a bakery, two or three farm implement dealers and three automobile agencies—my dad’s Chevrolet agency, my brother-in-law’s father owned the Buick/ Pontiac/GMC dealership, and there was a Ford agency. There were three physicians and at least two dentists.

And there were churches. There were Church of the Nazarene, Roman Catholic, Disciples of Christ, and Methodist congregations. Our family was involved in the First Baptist Church, and it was REAL CHURCH. Those churches are the kind that best represents God and I know so because Elizabeth Ferguson taught us in Training Union we were the only ones who could trace our beginnings to John the Baptist. I had no idea of what Landmarkism was until I took Baptist history in seminary. But we were definitely one of those as were most of the smaller Baptist Churches in the Southwest. I could visit the church today and could preach or teach a Sunday School class without question. But if the Lord’s Supper were prepared, I would be invited NOT to participate because only members of THAT church can partake.¹

The church was a vital congregation with as many as 150 people on Easter Sunday crammed into a small wooden frame building. Ruth Clegg, an English woman with a distinct accent, led the singing from the Broadman Hymnal. Her clear soprano voice could be heard above the volume of the entire congregation. We had no trouble with women leading worship because joining her was Ina Lou Fees on the Hammond organ and Ruth Ann Posey on the piano as we belted out Fanny Crosby gospel music.

The best thing about REAL CHURCH was we could visit any other Baptist church in the Southwest, and it was pretty much the same—the same Gospel music from the Broadman Hymnal, the same Sunday School lesson from the Uniform Lesson Series, the same envelope for your offering with a six-point record of your religious activity each week, and the same fiery hot evangelistic sermon with an invitation with every head bowed, and all eyes closed as we sang Just As I Am. That was the way Billy Graham did it.

When I was seven or eight the church needed a pastor and called Brother Clyde Aikman. He was a rip-roaring, hell-fire-and-damnation preacher who was a former Nazarene. He preached loud and hot and was a fundamentalist to the core. He had two years of college education and that was it. But he was a genuine person of feeling and warmth. He had a garage with lots of woodworking tools, so we went to his garage to make knick knacks during Vacation Bible School (VBS), and I loved it.

During a revival meeting in the Spring when I was nine Brother Aikman worked hard to get all of us kids saved. When I did not respond, he came to me during an invitation hymn toward the end of the week and asked me if I would accept Jesus. I declined and felt no offense. But during the evangelistic invitation on the last day of VBS that summer, I felt ready and walked the aisle to accept Jesus with no sense of coercion or reservation. Brother Aikman baptized me shortly thereafter.

I also remember visits from Pastor Aikman in our home. I was sick with a cold one time, and he came to visit me and prayed with me. I was impressed. We also had one of the first television sets in the town which we got for Christmas in 1950. Brother Aikman would rant and rail from the pulpit about the sinful beer ads on TV and how it was an instrument of the devil. But then he would come to our house and watch the wrestling matches almost every week. He had an infectious laugh, and I had a closer relationship with him than any other pastor in my childhood. The only serious automobile wreck I have been in was with him. He drove us to look at the wheat growing on a farm owned by the church. On the way home we were driving down a dirt road about 50 miles per hour when we collided with a pickup truck at an intersection where there were no stop signs. I had a cut in my right eyebrow. He was beside himself. But it was not a severe injury. Just a few stitches.

During a Royal Ambassador (RA) camp, probably when I was 11, a friend of mine had never made a decision to follow Jesus. During one of the invitations I talked with Jesse, and he said he would go forward during the invitation if I would go with him. We walked the aisle together. Since I was there, the leaders assumed I was coming for something so the counselor asked me if I was professing my faith. When I told him I was already a Christian he marked the card special service. I had no idea what it meant, but Brother Aikman said I should go forward at church the next Sunday and he would present me to the church. I did so and he presented me to the church for special service which he explained meant that God was calling me to preach or be a missionary. I remember my mother coming through the line to greet me with tears flooding her eyes, but I did not understand the fuss. I am sure that event caused me to explore more fully a call to ministry later in adolescence.

The church grew and soon the church needed a new building. Dad chaired the building committee and I remember him constructing a wooden model of the church so members could see what it would look like before voting to build it. It cost $80,000 and was built mostly with volunteer labor and some paid construction workers who were members of the church. My first memory of church conflict occurred in that process. Mrs. Tennant, who was the mother-in-law of dad’s brother, Frank, wanted an island sink in the kitchen. More women could participate in washing the dishes. But the committee wanted the sink on the wall so a Sunday School class could meet in the kitchen. When the church voted her down, she never came back to the church. The only other controversy I remember was when a member was voted out of the membership. Oklahoma was the last of two dry states, meaning there was no legal sale of alcohol beyond 3.5% beer. When the voters approved the legal sale of alcohol Charlie Lynch opened a liquor store. He was no longer a member of First Baptist.

I helped my uncle Bert, a professional painter, in the painting of some of the new building. His family had moved from California to Pond Creek where they lived a couple of years before returning to the West Coast. Sharon, Rick, and I were able to play with cousins Leland and Donnie on the McSwain side of the family. Uncle Bert taught me how to paint and I still like to paint walls and furniture. I have paid someone to paint our residences only once in our marriage and that was to paint a single cabinet. I was ill and unable to do it.

Shortly after the new church was dedicated, Clyde Aikman resigned to go to another church, considering his work in Pond Creek done. But he stayed connected to our family, conducting the funeral for our father when he died. He performed the marriage ceremony of our mother to Dale Kirk, a Pond Creek farmer, a couple of years after dad’s death. When I was at Southwestern Seminary, he was pastor in Rogers, AR and invited me to come and preach a TWO-WEEK revival. I ran out of stuff about half-way through the first week. I made it but