by Keith Bassham
S everal years ago we adopted an 11-issue publishing schedule that creates some confusion this time of year. This magazine, the May issue, goes to the printer at the regular time, but we will not publish again until after the May Graduation Fellowship Meeting, or roughly six weeks from the day I write this. And then the summer issue will appear about six weeks after that. It just works better for our office and for getting the news out about the Fellowship meeting while it is still news.
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My wife reminded me a few days ago that she and I met 40 years ago on the campus of Baptist Bible College, and she knew the date. I was visiting the campus, anticipating a fall enrollment, staying in the dorm with a friend who was in his first year. Shari, my future wife, was in a group of students who piled into my friend’s car for classes at High Street Baptist Church. I’ve tried to explain that the reason I don’t recall meeting her was because I was the new guy meeting lots of new people. I believe that her knowing me before I knew her empowers her in some way … at any rate, I did take notice of her a few months later — obviously.
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And roughly 20 years before that, Noel Smith was the editor of a two-year-old newspaper telling about what was happening in a two-year-old Fellowship. People seem to like to see and hear what was going on in and around the Fellowship 60 years ago, but back then, Mr. Smith liked to talk more about the future. This is part of an editorial from May 9, 1952, a couple of weeks before a major meeting announced to take place May 21. Mr. Smith describes what he hopes to come from such a meeting, and then he writes this about the relatively new Baptist Bible Fellowship:
There is a future, and a great future, for a Baptist group such as the Baptist Bible Fellowship — if:
We teach and preach that the Bible knows no such thing as a faith that is not demonstrated by works.
We teach and preach that the Holy Spirit is not some impersonal, Divine power that we in our vulgar ignorance are to “get hold of and use,” but that He is a Divine Person who’s to get hold of us and use us.
We emphasize the absolute necessity and importance of all the offices of the Ministry, not just one or two.
We balance our evangelistic zeal with systematic Bible teaching.
We teach and preach that there is no difference between intellectual crookedness and any other kind of crookedness.
We teach and preach that we shall not be rewarded unless we play the game according to the Divine rules.
We constantly strive, through humility and the hardest kind of work, to reach as high standards in teaching and preaching as we can.
May we take it to heart 60 years later.