Last week, a remote storage closet at the church was emptied. The items were deep in the recesses under the bleachers of the ROC gym. It was clear that most of the items had been placed there in 1996. Boxes of records, invoices, calendars, and held the settled dust of a quarter of a century. They were like little time capsules. The contents of the files were from the the early 80’s. It was before word-processing and computer files. Some of the papers gave the evidence of typewriters and whiteout. Things we can now do in seconds, took painstaking work.
I started through the files at first through curiosity and amusement. Then I began to wonder if there was anything of historical importance. So I slowed down and opened each file folder and scanned its contents. It was easy to reject most of the files instantly. Like the paid invoices for 1990 to a business closed by 2000 or a catalogue for music on tapes to play for people to roller skate. Other files were not as easy to dismiss. Some dealt with properties. One looked like it might have information about our buildings worth retaining. Methodically I flipped through the contents occasionally pulling something out for review.
I found a folder with a few newsletters from the church. I scanned them with greater interest. They had been printed on the outside of the Baptist Standard, the news magazine of our Texas Baptist organization. I looked at the announcements and then opened one of the magazines. The headlines reminded me of a dark, dark, day in my life. It was the day that the president of my seminary was fired. He was fired without cause except for telling the truth to power. The powerful people did not like it. They eliminated him. A lot of my naiveté was swept away that day. I had been taught that people of good will good disagree and remain friends. I had been taught that diversity was the way fo strength. I had been taught that the winds of preference were not as important as the sustaining power of character. Dr. Dilday was a brilliant scholar, inspiring teacher, loving pastor and encouraging mentor. The people people in power wanted to cancel him.
The day after he was fired we gather on the lawn of his house. The picture in the Baptist Standard recorded that family gathering. We wept as Dr. Dilday addressed us. We grieved as our seminary was ripped away from us. When I was there over 5,000 graduate students gathered to learn God’s word and ways. Now less than half of that number attend the school. I looked at that picture and tried to find myself. I think I am in the bottom left corner. I world has grown much more lonely. Unfortunatly, the things I was taught no long seem to hold. People don’t want to dwell in the tension of diversity, they want to be surrounded by people that only agree with them. The more we retreat from one another, the more we demand people agree with us 100%, the further we get from God’s dream of gathering all people together under the banner of the cross of love.