Mountain State Baptist Association

As we flipped the calendar forward to 2023, I began what I knew would be a long drawn out process: over the next six months, I would cull my thousands of books down to a manageable number that can fit in our home as I transition out of full time ministry. If you have been in my office, you may have seen a plaque with a Thomas Jefferson quote: “I cannot live without my books.” While I am not ready to hold that as a life conviction, it does relate closely to my deep affection for printed matter.

Books have been a constant over my 50 years of vocational ministry since that 1973 summer in college and my first paid youth position at a church near Lake Charles LA. Jana and I married a few weeks after my college graduation and before our move to Fort Worth TX to attend Southwestern Bapt. Theo. Seminary. I was 22, she was 19, and all my college texts came with us to that little condemned apartment that was (gas and water included) $73/ month. That collection grew rapidly as each seminary class demanded several textbooks not to mention books I knew would serve me for the duration of my ministry. We moved from the SWBTS campus 2x during those years and wound up between Houston and Galveston in local church youth ministry. We started there in 1977 and I finished seminary in 1978 (more on that next month). In 1982 after much prayer, counsel, and affirmation of that local body of Christ, we embarked on our mission career in Europe. We sold our house, our cars, became debt free, and the IMB crated up all our belongings. Our possessions (and the books) crossed the Atlantic and met us several weeks later in Lüneburg, Germany as we started language school at Goethe Institute.

 

A year later we (and the books) moved across Germany to Trier, its oldest city. We had six years there and too many adventures to recount, but in 1988 we had to return to the States due to medical issues, and hidden again in the crates were my books. We wound up in East Texas and a 23 year run at a Texas Baptist college as the campus minister and director of the Great Commission Center. As you can imagine, the book collection grew. In 2006 the book collection quit growing and started exploding during the doctoral studies with leadership, discipleship, and missions volumes. I graduated in 2013 and we moved from East TX to the heart of Appalachia—and the books came with us.

Books have been mentors, companions, and counselors. They have expanded my mind, challenged my will, instructed my actions, honed my spirit, and connected me with men and women across the ages as well as shown me the heart of God. I will forever be grateful for their role in shaping my life. Parting with each book is painful, a final goodbye to an old friend. Mine will find new homes in libraries (both public and private), some will fuel the minds of young and future pastors, some will be donated to the federal correctional institution in Welch, some will make their way to the associational library, some will find nooks and crannies at our home (yes, we are staying here in WV come July), and some will wind up at the Mercer County recycling station.
 

Toward the end of Paul’s ministry, his last years were spent in prison. He knew his missionary travels were over: no more teaching stints at Ephesus, no more preaching in the open squares, and no more interaction with kings and emperors. Yet he knows the power of the written word; he asks Timothy to bring him his books and parchments (2 Tim. 2.13). He also knows what he writes to the churches and to Timothy, Titus (the Pastoral Epistles), and Philemon will outlast him; indeed, they serve today as holy Scripture and guide the lives of believers two millennia later. Paul’s physical world had shrunk, as it does for every person who either grows old or feeble or both. Yet he knew through the recorded word he could continue to spread the gospel, and through his parchments and books maintain contact with the thoughts and lives of others far away from his prison cell.
 

I understand the power of the printed word as did the apostle Paul. I hold no illusions of writing holy scripture as he did, but I hope my writing project for the last three years will outlast me as it is now being edited, formatted, and proofed. I will share this very personal book with you sometime this spring. Every copy purchased will send half its profits toward the new associational office. The book shares a leadership principle from every one of the 260 chapters of the New Testament.

As I part with 1000’s of books in the next months, I will try to spend less time reminiscing about the past and look forward to finally reading books I’ve only referenced in past years, become reacquainted with some long dormant on the shelf, and continue to stretch my horizons as authors impart their wisdom and insight into my life. I thank God for my books and pray they enrich the lives of others long after I have left the scene. Find a book today and curl up in some quiet corner to discover a portal to worlds beyond your walls.