(ABP) -- My father, the Rev. Ronald F. Sanders, began pastoring Southern Baptist churches well before I was born. Like many who proclaim the gospel Sunday after Sunday, he was called to ministry at an early age. He graduated from college and attended seminary knowing full well that he -- and, by extension, his family -- would spend a life in service to the Lord.
His particular profession, of course, meant that I would have to bear the awful burden of wearing the dreaded label of “preacher’s kid,” which is only marginally better than that other dreaded label -- “preacher’s wife.” That said, I benefited from low expectations. Comparatively speaking, at nearly every church where my father served, I apparently behaved much better than the previous minister’s children.
For a young child, as self-aware as I was, there was also the practical aspect of growing up in and around the church -- I saw the best and worst in people. I benefited from loving, godly people who loved my family unconditionally and reflected what Scripture taught about living out one’s faith.
But I also watched my father navigate the church’s shark-infested waters, which were occasionally filled with a spiritually high-minded deacon or another sanctified busybody who was always ready to extract pounds of flesh from the preacher.
It was 1983 and my fourth-grade year was drawing to a close. For two years by then, we had been stationed at a church in the Deep South -- urban Jackson, Miss. The neighborhood around the church was in the midst of a demographic transition: Many of the middle-class white families either had grown old and died or fled to the suburbs. In their place, middle-class black families began taking up residence around the church.
During that time, my father developed a burden for the families in the neighborhood. He believed that Christ taught us to share the gospel with everyone, and certainly made no distinctions based on skin color. So this young white pastor spent countless hours inviting people who looked nothing like him to his church. Over time he began to realize that the church would have to reflect its surroundings before it could attract those from the neighborhood.
He had a revolutionary idea: Hire a black assistant pastor so that those living near the church would realize that he was serious about reaching the community.
So he talked to a few individuals at the state convention. Marginally progressive, they thought it was a great idea. They all realized that such a move probably meant that, in time, a black Southern Baptist congregation could sit on the corner of Robinson Street and Ellis Avenue.
He was encouraged by the convention officials’ enthusiastic reaction. But the reaction was rather different when he presented his plan to the church’s deacons, and he wasn’t prepared for their stiff resistance to hiring an African-American associate pastor.
As he shared his heart, burden and plan, several of the men got up and walked out of the meeting while yelling at their young pastor -- in words not fit to print -- that they would rather die than go to church with a black person. My father knew he couldn't continue to pastor a church whose so-called servants harbored that kind of hate. He made it clear where he stood, and as a result, my family was no longer welcome.
Not long after that, we left -- God had opened up another opportunity.
Just a few years later, our former church in Jackson had dwindled to the point where it was no longer able to afford to keep its doors open. Its members scattered. The irony is rich: The white Baptists left and the building was purchased by a predominantly black congregation that, to this day, still worships on the corner of Robinson Street and Ellis Avenue in Jackson, Miss.
Even as a nine-year-old boy, the lesson was obvious to me then: Love triumphs over hate; good prevails over evil -- and God has a way of getting what he wants.
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David Sanders is a columnist for Stephens Media in Little Rock, Ark., and the producer and host of the Arkansas Educational Television Network's "Unconventional Wisdom."
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