Moving from confusion to clarity

When it comes to my theological upbringing, I am a bit of a mutt. I was raised in a Christian home, but it was certainly not a Baptist one. As a kid, I attended a variety of different churches and experienced several different denominational traditions.

Then something amazing happened: I started dating a Baptist deacon’s daughter. To spend more time with her, I began attending church with her in Salem, Ore. This is where my theological confusion reached a fever pitch.

My girlfriend grew up in a highly conservative Baptist church—though it was not a Southern Baptist Convention church. When we eventually got married and moved back to Texas, my father-in-law, who is a profoundly godly man, encouraged us not to join an SBC church. To my wife’s dismay, there were few options in the Houston area that would satisfy her dad, so we eventually became members at Sagemont in Houston. If you know anything about John Morgan, Sagemont’s founding and former senior pastor, you know he is the epitome of theological conservatism.

Later on, I entered vocational ministry and began wrestling with the finer points of my theology. I had always had a high view of the Bible, God’s sovereignty, and the Great Commission, but for the first time, I was getting a crash course in the theological fault lines that can exist among those with sincerely held doctrinal beliefs.

While on staff at my first church, I was attending classes at Southwestern’s Houston campus and found myself captivated by a man named Charles Spurgeon. When I read Spurgeon, I was torn: He was passionately evangelistic while also immovable in his belief in God’s absolute sovereignty in salvation—and he defended both from the authority of God’s Word.

I began to feel like I was living a double life. I was slowly being convicted regarding God’s sovereignty, but I knew I would likely be looking for a new job if my pastor found out I was sympathetic to Calvin and reformed theology.

At that time, I began talking with a church I would ultimately pastor for five years. While serving there, I worked on my master’s degree at Midwestern and came to the conclusion that Spurgeon was on to something—it is possible to hold the conviction that God is absolutely sovereign while also pleading with people to surrender their lives to the lordship of Jesus. The more I embraced reformed theology and the writings of Calvin, the Puritans, and Spurgeon, the more passionate I became for evangelism, and my resolve for the authority and inerrancy of the Bible strengthened.

In my nearly 40 years, my theology has indeed changed. The influences of the various traditions of my childhood have all played a role in my spiritual formation, and I am deeply grateful for the complex and rich theological tradition of Baptists.

Our church, Fairview Baptist Church in Sherman, is a proud Southern Baptist Church. We hold firm to the authority and inerrancy of Scripture. We believe in the Trinity and in the perfect humanity and deity of Jesus. We believe salvation is by grace through faith alone. We are intentional about fulfilling the Great Commission.

Yet our church has cultivated a culture of theological study and discussion. We have been intentional about creating space for theological discourse in our study times. We hold the primary things with closed hands but keep the secondary things with open hands.

As my theological convictions have changed and strengthened, I see the same in my church. Not everyone agrees with me, and that’s OK. As long as we hold to the church’s primary doctrines and are committed to its mission, there is room for healthy dialogue and even disagreement.