Friendships: Between Fort Worth and Waco

Four mornings a week we gathered early behind The Chicken Shack in Waco, Texas to commute to Seminary.  We came from different directions geographically and theologically, piled into one car and for the next eighty-five miles, finished our night’s sleep. all except the driver, of course, arriving on campus just in time for a quick cup of coffee and a rush to our 8:00 o’clock classes. The trip back in the afternoon was much livelier, as we dissected, discussed, and debated what professors had tried to teach us that day, often interrupted by a brief stop at the Dairy Queen in Hillsboro, as if an ice cream cone could cool our tongues and tempers. History may well record that the great Southern Baptist Controversy began in a carpool of friends – want-to-be ministers – somewhere on Interstate 35 between Fort Worth and Waco.  Furthermore, if you could somehow gather those same guys together for about an hour and a half, we could probably solve the same controversary.  Do you have friends like that?  If so, thank God for them.   I love those guys.  I wish I could see all of them again.   We were different, but we were the same – a microcosm of the church – “one body in Christ, and individually members of one another” (Romans 12:5). When you get to heaven, you may hear a group of guys talking loud among themselves.  Pay them no mind. They will just be discussing “The things that are and the things that shall be hereafter” (Revelation 1:19, KJV).

Dr. Dan R. Crawford, Senior Professor, Chair of Prayer Emeritus; Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas. Former Head of Task Force for the Teaching of Prayer in Theological Education for America’s National Prayer Committee.  Administrative Consultant for the Valley Baptist Missions Education Center. President of Disciple All Nations