Rudy Gray, newly elected president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention and a pastor for more than 33 years, was on track to become a career sports journalist when, as a young man, he sensed God’s call toward a new direction.
Rudy Gray in the sanctuary at Utica Baptist Church, Seneca.As a junior at the University of South Carolina in the fall of 1973, Gray had already made a name for himself as a sportswriter and columnist. In two years at Anderson College, where he first took a shine to journalism, he rose quickly through the ranks, becoming editor of the college newspaper and writing part-time for the Anderson Independent, the daily newspaper for Anderson County and northeast Georgia.
At the University of South Carolina, he continued working for the Independent as the newspaper’s chief beat reporter for USC athletics. Within a few weeks of arriving in Columbia, however, the former three-sport letterman from Crescent High School in Iva found himself drawn not to the bright lights of big-time college athletics, but to a quiet corner on the bottom floor of the university’s graduate school library, a mostly empty place where the floor was uneven and bare light bulbs hung from the ceiling. There, for two or three hours each day, sitting at an old classroom desk, he began reading from the library’s collection of religious books.
“God was really working in my heart, and I sought his wisdom,” Gray said. He took a Billy Graham correspondence course and attended some Navigator meetings on campus, where he met some other students who, like him, yearned for a closer relationship with God. He was invited to speak on the radio in Camden. “A lot of things began to happen that I didn’t have any control over,” he said.
Gray came to believe that God was calling him to the ministry, and on a weekend at home he confided in his pastor, who asked, perhaps only partly humorously, “Can you do anything else?” Feeling “pretty low,” Gray drove back to Columbia on a Sunday afternoon, and he prayed – an admittedly “immature prayer,” he says – that God would give him “some kind of indication.”
He had come into possession of a catalog from Central Wesleyan College – he said he still has no idea how – with an application inside. He was impressed when he read the school’s statement of principles, so he pulled together enough money to apply. His desire was to earn a degree in Bible studies.
Things started happening quickly. Gray was accepted at Central Wesleyan. The same week, he received invitations to speak at three different churches. The cascade of developments felt like the affirmation he had prayed to receive.
A few weeks later, any lingering doubts were swept aside when he came home from school and walked into his mom’s kitchen, where she had left a plate of food for him with a newspaper clipping attached that read: “Central Wesleyan receives full accreditation.”
“Boy, all this is falling into line,” Gray recalls thinking. “Every step of the way, God had been sovereignly opening up doors.”
Gray spent his second semester at USC not in journalism classes, but taking courses in religion and psychology, a decision that tapped a wellspring of new possibilities for his vocational ministry.
He began serving at his first pastorate, Unity Baptist Church in Starr, shortly after graduating from college. While at Unity, and later at First Baptist Church in Central and then Roebuck Baptist, he continued pursuing his education, earning master’s and doctor’s degrees in theology from Luther Rice Seminary. In 1994, he became pastor of Utica Baptist Church, Seneca, where he continues to serve today.
The courses he had taken while completing his junior year at USC, particularly a course about the family, re-ignited his interest in psychology, which he says “had been there for a long time.” Gray earned a master’s degree in counseling from Liberty University and became a National Board-certified counselor. He is also a certified Christian counselor and a referral resource counselor for Focus on the Family Ministries. Once a week, he volunteers his time to counsel residents at “Home with a Heart,” a facility in Liberty for men struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. For the past 20 years, he has conducted seminars and retreats on marriage, personality, stress and worry, and boundaries.
At a press conference minutes after he was elected president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention in November 2008, he told reporters that the thrust of his presidency would be the family. “I think the home is basic,” he said. “If I could incorporate ways to strengthen families into the Experience Kingdom Life emphasis, that is what I’d want to do.”
To that end, Gray is working with SCBC staff to plan the 2009 annual meeting, one he hopes will center on the family and attract a multigenerational and ethnically diverse presence when South Carolina Baptists gather in Columbia next November. “The one thing we all have in common is our families,” he said.
In a column published in The Baptist Courier on Dec. 11, Gray wrote: “I believe we can become more family friendly without sacrificing doctrinal integrity or evangelistic zeal. The family is the basic unit in our society. When we have strong families, we will have stronger churches.
“Today, we know that one of the key traits of strong families is genuine faith in Christ and his word. Strong families do not just do religious stuff or practice dead traditions. They live out God’s truth among themselves and among others.
“Younger generations crave relationships. The church is the best place for old and young to come together, learning from each other, helping each other and enabling each other to be people who live for the glory of God in our time.”
Gray, a committed family man himself with three adult daughters, two of whom are married, and a wife, Anne, whom he met during his first pastorate when he ministered to her family following her grandfather’s death, credits his love of family to growing up in an “intact home.” His extended family, including both sets of grandparents, lived within shouting distance of his house, and he remembers family and friends sitting outside in “the grove” or around the swing at his grandparents, “just talking and telling stories.” He grew up going to church. He also credits the influence of the writings of James Dobson.
Although he no longer writes “Sports Desk,” the newspaper column that carried his byline when he was 20, Gray never gave up writing. He remembers the advice a respected elder offered at his ordination: “Don’t stop writing. We need good Christian writers.”
He is the author of four books: “Worry: The Silent Killer,” “Marriage That Works Is Work,” “Will the Real Pastor Please Stand Up,” and “Jude: The Alarm Has Sounded.” Also, since 2000, Gray has written a column for The Baptist Courier, “At Home,” in which he offers insight on family issues. He also writes a regular column, “Counselor’s Corner” for Pulpit Helps magazine.
Rudy Gray has managed to integrate his diverse gifts – those of minister, author, family counselor and denominational leader – into his understanding of God’s purpose for his life, but he says the guiding principle for his life is very simple. “In fact, I believe God has given every believer only one purpose in life,” he said. “There are many ways to achieve that purpose, but the overarching purpose of our lives is to glorify God.”