Hello, brothers and sisters of the Palmetto State: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I am profoundly grateful for the privilege of being elected — called by our great God — to serve you as editor of the historic Baptist Courier.
It warms my heart to look out the window of my new office and see that I serve at the corner of Manly and Petigru (the sign is misspelled with two “t’s” and needs a good editor) streets. The two men for which those streets (and many others around Greenville) are named were among the founders of my theological alma mater (my journalism alma mater is The University of Georgia — Go Dawgs!), The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, once in Greenville now in Louisville.
It warms my heart because it’s an Ebenezer, a reminder that South Carolina has a stalwart tradition of biblical and theological conviction and faithfulness. It’s a reminder of the God-inspired truth I am called to uphold and defend in every article, in every resource, every day, without apology, without compromise.
I grew up in the hills of north Georgia, about 80 miles as the crow flies (and we know there’s not a sober crow in all of God’s creation that can fly straight from here to Blairsville, Ga., without circumnavigating the Appalachians) west of Greenville. I’ve spent most of my life between two ’Villes: Blairsville and Louisville, and I’m glad to add another to my geographical biography.
Baptists newspapers have been a part of my life all my life. For decades, my parents read the Christian Index of Georgia, and my doctoral dissertation focused on Henry Holcombe Tucker, a fellow Georgian and a once-famous Southern Baptist theologian, pastor, and editor. Tucker owned and edited the Christian Index after the Civil War. In many ways, Tucker is a model for how I want to carry out our work at The Courier. Before taking his teaching post at Furman University, James Petigru Boyce was the first editor of “The Southern Baptist,” a newspaper that lived briefly as a precursor to The Courier.
What exactly will that look like? As for the full range of nitty-gritty specifics, only time will tell, but here’s a thumbnail sketch of the vision I cast for Courier trustees in an address on my election day. It can be summarized in four watchwords linked in two couplets: Inform and instruct, edify and glorify.
INFORM AND INSTRUCT
Inform. We will continue to publish all the news fit to print that relates to Southern Baptists in this state. I stand in a long stream of editors who are committed to telling the story of God’s grace at work in and through Baptists in South Carolina. That won’t change.
Instruct. We want our magazine, website, books, podcast, all our resources to help Christians understand and apply the Bible and its Christ-centered theology. God has given us a theologically annotated story that encompasses 66 books and a myriad of literature styles, every word inspired, inerrant, authoritative, and true. We need it for daily living, and I want The Courier to help with that.
EDIFY AND GLORIFY
Edify. Content that is compelling, gospel-centered, and theologically robust aimed at maturing believers will always edify. Of shallow preaching, the great Charles Spurgeon quipped, “Sermonettes produce Christianettes.” Indeed. We’re not interested in living in the shallow end of the biblical pool but learning to swim in the deep and glorious waters of our infinitely great God and His redeeming, transforming love for sinners like me.
Glorify. Whatever the article or resource, and in our daily work around The Courier office and in the field, our target is identical to the apostle Paul’s: “So then, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all things to the glory of God.” The Protestant Reformation framed it in a Latin phrase: soli deo gloria — all things for the glory of God alone. God’s work, God’s way, for God’s glory.
Specifically, what does all this mean? Here are a few things you might expect to see in coming months in no particular order.
• A help to pastors and church leaders
Articles, podcasts, and sponsored/co-sponsored events aimed at encouraging and helping pastors and local church leaders. I served as a pastor for 14 years and fully realize that it is a calling both glorious and gut-wrenching, delightful and dangerous. Being a trusted friend to our pastors is an important part of my calling, and I want the pages and resources of The Courier to reflect that.
• A hopeful companion for your daily walk
One of the most sobering verses in all of Scripture is Hebrews 12:14, “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” We want to publish and recommend resources (as part of this mission, we’ll be regularly reviewing and recommending solid Christian books by evangelical authors near and far) that will help readers think and live daily in fidelity to Scripture and sound doctrine. In John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” my favorite book besides the Bible, Christian was helped to the Celestial City by a traveling companion named Hopeful, who constantly stirred Christian to love and good deeds. We want to be a Hopeful to aid readers along the winding, twisting, hilly, obstacle-strewn road that leads to heaven.
• An increased social media presence
For better or worse, we live a good portion of our lives today on the world wide web. The past 15 or so years have seen the introduction of a slew of new words into our lexicon: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. Full disclosure: I’m a decidedly old-school man. My dad was a World War II veteran. My mom was a homemaker deluxe. I’ve had the same hairstyle since 1988. I grew up in a world populated by pay phones and CB radios, vinyl record albums and jam boxes, chess boards and Monopoly money, Smoky and the Bandit, Elvis and Priscilla, George and Tammy, Ozzy Osbourne and Ozzie and Harriet. You get the picture. Pac-Man and the bag phone were significant technological advances. Back then, transitioning meant you were moving to a new place. All to say that 2023, in ways both terrible and terrific, is a brave new world.
Today, as an institution called to communicate God’s timeless message through available technology, we must embrace the present as a window into the future. The internet moves on every day. We’re grateful for Gutenberg, but let’s harness Gates for God’s glory, too. That means, at minimum, developing a substantive, perennial social media presence — all the while refusing to compromise God’s unchanging truth.
• A redesigned website
We’ll soon update our website and are committed to updating it daily with news, features, and helpful resources. I’ll leave this at stay tuned.
PRAY!
I covet your prayers as my family relocates to the Upstate this spring from Louisville, where we’ve spent 20 life-shaking ministry years. Pray for humility, for growth in godliness, for perseverance in the faith, for firmness of conviction, for clear-eyed biblical vision, that I will be the kind of man God wants to lead The Baptist Courier, one who fears God and not man (Galatians 1:10).
I’m committed to communicating with you weekly on our website through my editor’s column, which will also appear in the monthly magazine. I am calling it “Grace and Truth” as an ode to our Lord Jesus Christ whom Scripture describes as “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), and as a summary of the theme I want to proclaim, directly or indirectly, every time I tee off: a theology of God’s sovereign grace as found in the absolute truth of God’s Word. A big God. A big Bible. It’s all we have. It’s all we need. Which is an apt segue into my next column: Where to start?