Beeson Podcast, Episode #
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>>Announcer: 

Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. 

>>Doug Sweeney:

Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I’m Doug Sweeney and I'm joined today by Dr. Rick Lance, the executive director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. Later this semester, Dr. Lance will preach to us in Hodges Chapel here at Beeson. We're looking forward to his sermon and looking forward today to finding out about his many years of faithfulness in ministry and ministerial leadership. So welcome to the podcast, my friend. 
>>Lance:
Thank you, Doug. Glad to be with you and look forward to our conversation together. Could I say a personal word right up front? 
>>Sweeney:
Sure thing. 
>>Lance:
Yes, sir. In relationship to Beeson, I was on the Board of Trustees when Beeson was established there at Samford. I was on the Board of Trustees at Samford. I remember when the money came in for Beeson, Mr. Beeson set aside that money. I was delighted to vote on that, watching the beautiful construction of what you have there. And Hodges Chapel, Jerome Hodges and I were, he's a good bit older, somewhat older, but we were on the Board of Trustees together for a good while. And I'm just real proud of Beeson. I think you've done an outstanding job. You still have a wonderful niche where you are really highlighting and underscoring the need to have in-person learning which I think is the best form of learning. However, with the caveat that I know we live in an online digital world and so I understand that for other schools but you have stayed true to that classical principle, if you will, of in-person learning, and I think that's a good ... we need some of that in today's climate. So thank you.
>>Sweeney:
Thanks for that good word. As you know, we feel like that's what the Lord has made us to be, at least for this long season of our lives, and we're happy to be doing it. It's exciting.
>>Lance:
Well, you're doing it well.
>>Sweeney:
I thought maybe, lots of our listeners know who you are already, but maybe not everybody does, so we ought to introduce you briefly to them. Would you mind just telling us a little bit about how you came to faith in Christ and how you came to discern that the Lord was leading you into ministry as a young man? 
>>Lance:
Yes, sir. Well, when you ask someone in my point in life a question, I always had to begin with Adam and Eve and work forward. So as a young child, just a real traditional kind of testimony, as a young child, I was in church because my family, they were rooted in our local church, rather small neighborhood kind of church. And at eight years of age, I became aware, very aware, because I was a sensitive child, still have some of that in me, where I knew that I was a sinner and a lost sinner. Now, I was a very shy young man and had to overcome a lot of that. A shy young boy and into early manhood. So four years later, I made my decision, profession of faith, as we called it, publicly, but I had been struggling with it for four years. 
Now, the reason I struggled is it was just hard for me to realize that a God who loved the entire world would really be bothering to love on and die on the cross for a young boy growing up in Birmingham, Alabama. But once I got beyond that and realized that it was a very personal thing, I was able to come to faith in Christ and make it public. I was glad to do that. Even though I was a shy little boy, I was glad to do it.
Not long after that, this shy little boy became very much ... as an observing, sensitive people do observe ... and I'm an observer of people. And I really enjoyed observing our pastors. And although their personalities, of course, would be different from mine. And I was drawn to the fact that I felt led into the ministry. I didn't know exactly what that meant. But a week before I was 16 years of age, back when we had Youth Week, I was asked to speak or preach that morning. And the old template that you hear about the story about study, study, study, and I did. I came up four or five sermons and I chose one. And once I got up there, all of them came out. And I preached about 12 minutes. And I remember that fondly.
But at that point on, I became a pastor at 18 years of age. I was never a youth minister, never anything of this nature. I was a pastor at 18 and seamlessly and all through these years, I've been in ministry without interruption. That would mean during college, there at Samford I served two churches and then went to seminary and served two churches and came out of seminary back to Birmingham at a church that no longer is and exists now in the inner city. And then from there, the First Baptist Church of Cullman, where I served four and a half years and then 15 years at the First Baptist Church of Tuscaloosa. 
Now 28 years ago, I came here and have been here ever since. And therefore I've spent, if you go from 18, I've really spent half of my ministry life in this role as executive director.
>>Sweeney:
Wow, it's amazing. And it's been a very fruitful ministry. I'm thinking about those who listen to the podcast who aren't Baptists. The Baptists will already know what the leaders of the boards of mission do. Those who don't, can you tell us, just day to day, week by week, what is your ministry like at the board of mission?
>>Lance:
Yeah, well let me do a bit of a comparison. For those, I'm not trying to do a condescending kind of approach, I just want to make sure our listeners understand. Baptist is not connectional, we don't have a hierarchy or anything of this nature. I always think of it not on a pyramid where somebody's at the top like an archbishop or something. It's an inverted pyramid where you're serving alongside the churches.
But as we often say, the headquarters of Baptist life, Southern Baptist life, Alabama Baptist life would be in the local church. Now, having said that, the role that I have, really, there are 41 of us in various state or regional conventions across the landscape of Southern Baptist life, geographically and demographically. The role here in Alabama ... Alabama, though we're small in comparison to Texas and Florida and Georgia in population, and we don't have a lot of large churches, the largest contributor to the national causes of the SBC, that would be Alabama. 10% of the budget for Southern Baptist Convention work comes from Alabama. 
Now that only illustrates the generosity of Alabama Baptists. My role is one of direction and navigation, if you want to put it that way. There is a staff here and we operate like a mission board. We have an international mission board nationally that with SBC that relates to the world, a North American mission board that relates to North America, US and Canada, and the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, which relates to the ministries focused singularly right here in Alabama. Now, we do partner with all of them, but the lead for us in terms of our mission, our parish, if you will, if people use that language, our mission is to cooperate with, relate to, strengthen and support the work in the local churches. 
I do have a CEO type responsibility with the staff here, but as I came coming from the past, I struggled with that a little bit, I'd never seen myself as a CEO. So in the pastorate of First Baptist Tuscaloosa and other places, I was a shepherd having to try to be a CEO at times. It was flipped. I'm a CEO of a staff seeking to be a shepherd to them and to the churches. And that model, that paradigm helped me get my mind around what I was doing. And the role here is one of major responsibility. That is, we are developing the budget, not only for the state convention, but to feed the national convention from guests from Alabama Baptist churches. And I say 10% of that
on the national level ... really, a little bit more than that ... comes from Alabama. 
I don't know if that answered your question. If you want day-to-day responsibilities, I could tell you this, there is no normal day. I've had my colleagues who get into it say, describe a normal day, and I've said to them, when I have one, I'll be glad to describe it to you. I've not had any normal days. 
>>Sweeney:
Yeah, I feel the same way in the Dean's office here at Beeson. It might help, just one follow-up. So what are some of the practical ways in which you and your team do the supporting of the churches? Are you on the road a lot? Are you preaching in churches, meeting with people in churches? Are you providing money for any of the missionary efforts of churches? What kind of things are taking place? 
>>Lance:
Well, let me let me try to be basic, but be as thorough as I can. Number one, we all do travel. We do have people who actually live outside of Prattville where our offices are. There are some in Birmingham and other places across the state, but the primary workforce, campus ministers are not included in this ... The primary state, we are state missionaries and we are officed here. 
Now, in Alabama, the way where our road system is and the size of our state, we can be anywhere, theoretically, anywhere in the state, go up there and come back home and we wouldn't have to spend a night. Now, some do because they may have other assignments. The main responsibility, our staff is relatively small, the main responsibility we have is to work with our partners in associations and working with them directly with the churches. 
Now a lot of times, we do have an instructional, educational side. We're not a seminary or divinity school, but we do what you would call practical ministry instruction. We have that. We also have ministries that would be classified now under compassion ministries. We are primary in disaster relief. Alabama Baptists have 7,500 trained disaster relief workers. We spend a whole lot of money in disaster relief. 
Helping churches, our philosophy is, when a disaster strikes, we try to help the church get back up on their feet where they can minister to the community. It's hard to do both at the same time. Our focus is on the local church so they can get to the community. We have under the radar, we have deaf ministries, we have English as a second language, we have the standard things that are in Baptist churches a lot of people wouldn't relate to. We still operate in the terms of functioning ministry in terms of Sunday school and discipleship development. We still help the churches in their staffing, that is, not placing people, but perhaps recommending people. And then a lot of it is what I call the encouragement ministry.
Our people are, they know one of their major roles is to encourage and try to strengthen the leaders of the local churches. Pastors, I'll just tell you, pastors and local churches try to get the mix. We relate to the churches, but every church needs a pastor, whether they have one or not. But the way to get to the church is through the pastor. But when the pastor leaves, we still relate to that church. So we have a church system with a pastor focus, is the best way to put it. One of the ways that we try to stay in contact, for instance, in COVID, when everything was shut down, our staff was challenged to contact every church in Alabama that we could get in touch with by phone calls, text, or emails. A lot of people don't read emails anymore, but back then they still did a little bit. But we did texting and calling, and perhaps the most affirmation we've ever gotten during that very distressing period was the, they said, thank you for the affirmation. Thank you for the encouragement. We never promoted anything. We said, how are you doing? How's your family doing? How's your church family doing? How can we help you and how can we pray for you? That's exactly our approach in COVID. But actually, that's our approach in general. We just don't phrase it that way. 
It is a very church oriented church. We relate to the churches with a pastor focus. And now 17% of our churches do not have pastors at any given period of time. When I first came, it was more like 10%. There is a pastoral shortage right now, and it will continue for a while. And when I first came, the average age of a pastor in Alabama, perhaps in the SBC too, was like 49. Now, it's in the late 50s. Pastors are serving longer. There are many more needs for pastors, even in retirement, post-retirement or in the years of retirement. 
Therefore, the growing number of churches across our state, 60% would be in the category of bivocational pastors. They are completely different. They're very diverse, but a growing number of them are retired pastors. Yes, educators, business people, school teachers. I'm talking about educators in college and school teachers. And you still have the fellow working for someone. But they're more diverse than what we would call our full-time leadership, our full-time pastors. 
So customizing everything is impossible, but relating in terms of models, we've tried to do as well as we can through the years. I might add our staff is half the size it was when I came 28 years ago. 
>>Sweeney:
Wow. Well that'll keep you busy. I mean, you keep up on how many Baptist churches there are in the state of Alabama? How many congregations are we talking about? 
>>Lance:
3,250. 
>>Sweeney:
And how big is your staff? We currently with state missionary, well the whole thing counting custodial services, campus ministers, we would have about 65. When I came, we had about 121.
>>Sweeney:
Wow. Well, thank you for all the hard work and faithfulness and ministry, caring for so many of us in so many churches around the state. Would there be one or two cutting edges to what's going on at the Board of Mission these days or new things that you're trying to get going or work on that we should know about and maybe offer some prayer support for? 
>>Lance:
Yes, sir. I would simply say, and we were aware of this going into COVID, church health has been a big issue during my tenure. We have now begun using the word church revitalization. I did not cozy up to that word very early, but I've embraced it now. And the reason I say this, we focused at church health like physical health. Every person should get a physical every year where they check your vitals. And what we were trying to help churches do is check their ministry vitals to say, okay, we're a little bit unhealthy here. We're healthy over here. 
Another thing we addressed, we tried to say it, communicated where we could, without being a little bit too dramatic about it, is that we feel like that every church, even the churches which are healthy, have areas of un-health. But we finally embraced the term as the SBC has, church revitalization. I would say that is among the greatest needs in our state. And it is a Mount Everest kind of a challenge for us because there are so many churches now that do need, and I'm not talking about those who are just about to go out of business. They may have already decided to be a re-plant, which we do recommend. You have an Anglo church going out and you have an ethnic group coming in. That's a very strategic focus that we have. But even some of the larger churches, it's a little bit more camouflaged, but there are always needs there to have some area of church revitalization. That doesn't mean we come in and do it, but we do have, our staff is lean in that area, but all of us do it to an extent. We do have a strategic focus on helping the leader and leaders understand the lay of the land because a fresh eyes, outside eyes helps a great deal. Well, that's one area. 
Another area I already mentioned, the growing need for bivocational pastors. We have an effort initiative called Calling Out to Call. Now, we understand God does the calling, but once they're called, we're trying to help them understand that bivocational ministry is an outstanding call. It is a legitimate need with a growing number of churches. Our seminaries have begun training people to think that way. When I was coming along, it was never mentioned. I never heard anybody talk about it. But they are now because we're going to have more and more. Some of the so-called full-time churches will be transitioned into part-time or bi-vocational churches in the future. Those two areas are vital. 
One of the other areas that I think we've got to keep before our people is something that we're traditionally known for in Alabama Baptist life and in the SBC as well, is we have to do a good job in campus ministry. It is the last opportunity we have to reach young people before they transition into adulthood. And the generations we're getting now did not necessarily grow up in traditional homes, traditional Christian homes, and they oftentimes were perhaps raised by one parent.
And that's even true in the ministry, by the way. I'll talk to you about that. That area, we've got to be focused. And in Alabama Baptist Life, somewhere between 325,000 to 350,000 students in some fashion, whether it's a community college or the four-year colleges, they're there. And we have made a big investment. If you were to look at the state board part of the budget, we have a huge investment in the area of campus ministry, because if, as I said, it is the last opportunity of major significance to impact their lives spiritually and get them on the road to faithfully and obediently serving the Lord. 
Now, I could go on and on. Don't forget disaster relief. The disasters that are coming, they've been here. I could spend a whole podcast describing about that. But also we'd like to mention that would be a ... the better way to put it, I guess, it could be called discipleship, but leadership development. You can get the academics in seminary setting, and there's, listen, that ought to be highlighted. But at some point, some point in the pilgrimage, you get in a snag period, a downturn, a stale time when you've got to be ... and we try to do is catch them in a period like that if not before and help them foresee what they can do and have personal development strategies. 
So those are the areas I would mention. I could go on and on. I eat and sleep this role so I enjoy it. 
>>Sweeney:
It's marvelous. I'd underscore all those things if we had time, but I really like what you said about pouring into college ministries these days. So many people come to faith, get just real foundational discipleship work done with them in college, and even in the seminaries. We get a growing number of students these days who really came to Christ for real during college, became serious disciples, and were so excited about serving the Lord that after just a few years being Christian, they want to come to seminary.
>>Lance:
Let me add, excuse me, I'm sorry.
>>Sweeney:
No, please.
>>Lance:
I was going to add one thing. It's a bit dated, but I heard years ago, not terribly long, but some years ago, the International Mission Board did a study on where their missionaries come from in terms of their calling. And a lot of it came through campus ministry. And I think that surprised them. It did not surprise us. 
>>Sweeney:
Yeah, it doesn’t surprise me either.
>>Lance:
Campus ministers are leading in student missions, and I'm talking about going places, and those who go get a passion, and that is just accelerated as they get a little older and think about life's calling or what they're going to do with themselves in the future. I interrupted you, but yeah, I should ... 
>>Sweeney:
God's doing some amazing things in the campus ministries in Alabama and beyond, and that's a nice segue to the next thing I wanted to ask you about. So people in our world, people in the church world, not just ministers and seminary types, but anybody in local congregations who are paying attention and investing in the future of their churches have been told that we're in some kind of dry days in the history of Christianity these days. 
Some people talk about a great de-churching, by which they're referring to the declines in church membership over the course of the 21st century, the closure of way too many churches over the course of the 21st century, and it can leave a lot of us feeling kind of down about our participation in the work of the Lord through the life of the church. 
But someone like yourself has both a micro-level understanding of what's going on in a lot of the churches you are serving, but you are in a kind of a position where you can look at macro level trends as well. So I want to ask you, now that we're all worried about the great de-churching, and we all have reason to feel a little bit bad about how things are going, do you see some things that would encourage the rest of us to be sure and convinced that the Lord is still at work powerfully in our churches and doing some amazing things, bringing people to faith, discipling people, and growing His churches in key places?
>>Lance:
Well let me, I never want to be critical of anyone who writes a book, because if I were writing one, it'd be welcomed by criticism. And I think they've done their research, but there are two books that have bothered me through the years, and I'm not going to mention the authors. One of them is “The De-churching,” the one you're referring to. The other one was, “The Autopsy of a Dead Church.” I'll tell you my disaffinity for those terms. 
One is, to call a church “dead” is like a doctor going in to a terminal patient and saying, “You have absolutely no hope, you are dead.” I have never liked approaching things that way. You're talking about Debbie Downer, that is a downer for a church. It's not encouraging them, it's not edifying them whatsoever. The de-churching is a little less personal, and it's descriptive, but I'm not sure it's totally accurate.
Now, let me try to explain what I'm talking about here. There is no doubt in the 21st century, we have experienced an evangelical recession. That's the best way I could describe it. It doesn't take a genius to be descriptive in that regard. You have the cultural pressures which are identifiable and palpable in their impact on Christians and local churches. 
What we have to remember now is the nature of the way we're living. I'm not doubting some of that's not happening, but I think it may be over-dramatized in this sense. You take a local church. When I was growing up, if you averaged 100 in Sunday school or 100 in worship, that was about the same 100 people every week. Nowadays, if you have 100 here, 100 there, and four Sundays perhaps, you're dealing with at least 300 people. It's not that they're de-churched totally, some are, but they are not as involved as much in attendance. And there are so many factors, time does not allow us to do that. So it's not a total de-churching. 
Some of that is coming from the fact that SBC and evangelicals get lumped in with the entire pie of so-called mainstream denominations, if you want to call it that. Where a lot of that has happened has been in those areas of the mainstream denominations. No doubt in SBC life, I'm not trying to be an apologist for it, I'm not trying to explain it away. The one thing we run into here is the reason we're reflecting less numbers, one of the major reasons, not the only, is that churches do not report to us what we call an annual church profile, which gives basic information. The researchers have to guess at the rest of it. But again, there's no doubt that it has at the high of 16 million members in Southern Baptist life down to 13, four or five. Some of that has been, they just left, died and left. There's been that evangelical recession. We've also lost some generations in there. When we didn't do a good job, admittedly, in discipleship, really, we didn't do a good job, admittedly, in discipleship. Really we didn't do a good job in evangelism and discipleship, but I won't go there. 
I am encouraged about what I read and observe about Generation Z, the upcoming generation. I think they're going to be much more oriented toward the values of the World War II generation, that in-between generation and older Baby Boomers. If I could just pause and give a confession or a description here. The Baby Boomer generation, when it came along, you remember this, Doug, when it came along, there were so many of us, 1946-1964, we were world changers in many different ways. But as the generation got older, pushing back on the World War II generation, which my dad was World War II, as we became older we became more like them. 
And what happens with generations, they keep traits and characteristics of their generation, but they assume the traits and characteristics of the older generation as they go through those stages. Someone was complaining to me, his church, he said, if we didn't have the over 55 group giving to our church, we couldn't do anything. And I said, it's always been that way. Always. My early days, always been. They go through stages of life and a lot of things begin to kick in and they're realizing stewardship. They've raised their families. They understand more about stewardship. But on top of that, you've got travel ball with middle-aged people, you have boomers retiring and perhaps more able to do things than they did when they were working or in addition to that they much more travel for them because they are generally healthier than previous generations I guess. 
So again that's the part of the culture part. And then also, the antagonism of popular culture toward Christians is now, it's not even camouflaged. You add all those pressure points, and I would say it this way, as bad as it seems, I am surprised we're doing it as well as we are. But I guess that summarizes it. 
>>Sweeney:
Yeah. Well, we didn't talk about addressing this, but a few minutes ago you talked about how these days, over the course of a month in the life of local congregation, you can have a lot more people coming through the doors, attending school and so on, than you feel like you're getting every single Sunday. And I wonder, is this something that your team has been trying to think through and pray about and advise congregations about? If we're trying to take those folks and kind of love them even more fully into the life of our congregations, are there things that have worked pretty well in other churches that we might think about doing? 
>>Lance:
Well, let me do a little macro [inaudible 00:30:07]. Again, when I was growing up in the church culture we have, we don't have a church culture anymore. Of the 52 Sundays, you had people 45 to 48 Sundays, those were your leaders. And when I was a pastor, it was more like 35 Sundays. Well, today you have leaders in a church that are only there half the time. They may have a home somewhere else or whatever, and they give you less time.
When I was growing up, the church was the center of everything. That's the church culture. The schools built their ... it's unbelievable to say this ... the schools built their schedule around the church. They didn't have homework on Wednesday night. It was unbelievable, but that was true. We had such a church culture. 
Now it's centered about a number of things, not just the church. Church is just part of that orbit. And so we are competing a good bit, if you will put that word in there, but to be realistic, people's lives are more complicated, they're more busy than when we had neighborhood churches related to small communities or neighborhood communities or open country churches or whatever we had. It was again the center of things and they built their lives around that. 
Now we are seeking to help them build their lives around Christ and challenging them to be a part of a fellowship that will enhance that. Now that should have, it could have, it should have been the focus all along, but the focus is not so much building a church attendance, it's building lives who will be involved in churches. And if we look at it that way, it takes a lot of the, it helps us analyze it a little better. 
Now, I shouldn’t go off on this, but you take the phenomenon of the cultural pressures, which I think are very palpable and understandable upon us with the LGBTQ movement. To think about 10 years ago or 15 years ago, people had a different opinion about it. And then you get 10 years ago, five years ago to the present. That's changed a little bit. There's a bit of a pushback now. But just think how rapidly that change happened. 
Now, it used to be a big thing even talk about divorces in the family and that's another contributor to the attendance factor. You'll have the kids a father and with a mother and they're divorced and remarried or whatever. And they only have them that half the time. So that is a major part of what we're talking about. And we have to be realistic. I'm not saying compromising or anything. We just have to be realistic and understand how difficult and complicated lives have become. 
>>Sweeney:
Thank you for that. We are running out of time, and we want to remind our listeners that Dr. Lance is preaching in chapel here at Beeson Divinity School on Tuesday, March the 3rd, and I think most of our listeners know this already, but Tuesday mornings at 11 a.m. in chapel is how you join us. We would love to have you come and listen to Dr. Lance. And after he comes and preaches, we'll have a recording of his sermon that we'll share with people who missed it in the chapel itself. 
But having made that announcement, Dr. Lance, I want to conclude by getting our people praying for you and your team and the work that you're doing. It is so crucial to the health of our churches, not just in Alabama, but all over the country and through the mission board all over the world. This is a big question. I'm sure there's 37 ways you'd like us to be praying for you, but if there are one or two or three ways that our audience could be praying for you in the immediate days ahead, what would those be? 
>>Lance:
You're right, I could pontificate. I'm not gonna go personal as much as I'm going to maybe go general in this sense. I'm not going to identify a certain specific prayer request. But every day I try to pray this prayer. I picked it up from somebody somewhere years ago. 
Lord, give me wisdom for the day. Lord, guide my walk during this day. And third, guard my ways as I live this day for you to be obedient. 
The major part of anyone's challenge, and we can state this over and over for anyone, leader or follower, all of us are followers, you got to be a follower before you can be a leader, is we have to have godly wisdom in order to be discerning in the right moment. Because in this role here, you make so many decisions. Some of them have the luxury of time. Some of them do not. Some of them relate to things you can't even talk about that are in benevolence issues and helping people who are in bad straits or whatever and helping them get through situations you don't really want to talk about, but they got to have someone to talk to. 
Having that kind of discernment to be able to say the right thing the right way with the right spirit is the greatest need I see in my life, continually, always have been. And I think it is in the lives of others, whether they say it that way or not. I think that is true.
>>Sweeney:
Amen. Friends, this has been Dr. Rick Lance. He serves as the director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions in Prattville. He is a good friend. We're delighted to say he'll be back at Beeson to preach in Chapel Tuesday, March the 3rd. Please come and join us if you can. Please listen to recording if you can't. Please remember we love you and are praying for you in a regular way. We thank you for joining us today and we say goodbye for now.
>>Mark Gignilliat:

You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our Producer is Neal Embry. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify.