Remembering Adrian Rogers, One Pastor's Reflections
TEXT: John 1:6
TOPIC: Remembering Adrian Rogers: One Pastor’s Reflections
Pastor Bobby Earls, First Baptist Church, Center Point, Alabama
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Some of you have heard the news of Dr. Adrian Rogers’ death just yesterday. Dr. Rogers was without question one of the preimenent preachers of the 20th and 21st Centuries. His life and ministry were instrumental in shaping the spiritual climate of our denomination, our nation and our world and many ministers such as myself. His legacy will live on well into the future as a result of his stand for theological conservatism and scriptural inerrancy.
I know this is one preacher boy whose life, preaching, and ministry have been profoundly affected as a result of this great man. This evening, I think it fitting that we take time as a Bible believing church, to pay tribute to one of God’s choice servants, Dr. Adrian Rogers.
The Bible says, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.”
(John 1:6) That wasn’t the last man God sent out. Adrian Pierce Rogers was born September 12, 1931, in West Palm Beach, Florida. At the tender age of 14, Adrian trusted Jesus Christ completely as his Savior and experienced a dramatic conversion experience. He was so radically changed that his teachers asked, “What happened to Adrian? He’s so changed.” That transformation was so real that it lasted for the next 60 years.
If you will permit me to read a portion of a Baptist Press article released just yesterday. I think it captures well a summation of this great Baptist preacher and pastor.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (BP)—Dr. Rogers came to Bellevue Baptist Church in the suburbs of Memphis, Tennessee in 1972 and retired this year, and in his 35 years there helped build the church from a membership of 9,000 to more than 29,000. His face and voice were known to millions of believers worldwide thanks to his Love Worth Finding television and radio ministry, which is carried in more than 150 countries.
But Rogers may be best remembered for his leadership in what is commonly called the Conservative Resurgence, the movement in which Southern Baptists elected a series of conservative leaders in response to evidence of theological liberalism within the denomination's seminaries and entities.
Rogers' election as president at the SBC annual meeting in 1979 marked the official beginning of the resurgence and was the first of many hotly contested elections between conservatives and moderates. 1979 was the year I graduated from college. My graduation coinsided the beginning of the Conservative Resurangence with the SBC. My own pastor was a strong conservative, and he first introduced me to Adrian Rogers whose election that year to the presidency of the SBC in Houston, Texas, began the theological shift in our convention. I think it important to say here, that in the history of the Christian world, no church, or denomination has ever drifted into liberalism to the degree our beloved convention had done, and been able to reverse that trend. Great ships do not turn easily or quickly.
Dr. Rogers and the other conservative presidents who followed, promised to use their nominating powers to name only those who believed in the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible. Over the course of the next two decades, Southern Baptist seminaries and entities saw dramatic change, as conservative leaders and professors took the place of moderates who had held those positions for years.
Rogers, who also was elected president in 1986 and 1987, served as chairman of the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message Study Committee that reviewed and revised Southern Baptists' confession of faith.
The author of 18 books, Rogers is survived by his wife, Joyce Rogers, as well as four children, nine grandchildren and one great grandchild.
"The flags of Christianity in general, and of Southern Baptists in particular, should be at half mast upon this occasion because few and very, very few like Dr. Adrian P. Rogers -– friend, pastor, warrior, statesman, soul winner and inspiration -- seldom arise in one generation," SBC President Bobby Welch.
Rogers, in an October interview with the Florida Baptist Witness newspaper, humbly acknowledged the significance of his role in the Conservative Resurgence.
“I look back on my life and there are a lot of things that have happened. I have written books, pastored churches, preached on radio and television around the world. But I think the part that God allowed me to have in the turning of the SBC may have the longest-lasting effect and be the most significant,” Rogers said. “[The conservative resurgence] is part of church history. We think of the ancient councils of the church in decisions and so forth, but this thing is not small; it is big.”
While Rogers was the first in a string of conservatives elected over moderate candidates, Morris H. Chapman, the current president of the SBC Executive Committee, was the last. Chapman's election in 1990 marked the end of moderates' attempts to win the presidency. The next year, Chapman ran unopposed.
"His tenacious yet humble commitment to the absolute authority and inerrancy of God’s Word stood in stark contrast to the ominous theological drift that threatened the Convention," Chapman wrote in a first-person Baptist Press column. "… When selected to take the helm of the SBC, he led us in making critical course corrections that helped return the convention to its original course. Today, as a result, the mission boards, seminaries and entities of the SBC have all been returned to their historic theological foundations."
What Dr. Rogers and others accomplished is tantamount to conservative leadership in political circles today who may be able to return America to the faith of our founding fathers. That doesn’t happen overnight. But it happened in the SBC.
At the SBC annual meeting this year, Rogers was honored with a resolution passed by the SBC Executive Committee that noted many have called Rogers the "Prince of Preachers" and the "preeminent pulpiteer" among Southern Baptists.
“In his first term as president, he took the initial steps that eventually led to a conservative resurgence within the Southern Baptist Convention, giving root to the initiative to return Southern Baptist entities to their historic conservative stance regarding God’s Word, and setting in motion the strategy that would dramatically change the course of history for the Southern Baptist Convention," the resolution noted.
"The Lord has blessed his evangelistic efforts, which have led thousands to faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior," the Executive Committee resolution also stated in a list of highlights of Rogers' ministry.
Rogers preached at the SBC Pastors' Conference in Nashville, Tenn., June 20, appearing energetic and showing no signs of cancer. Messengers gave him a standing ovation. Penny and I were there.
"There has never been a greater day to preach the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ than today," Rogers said then. "Somehow, we get the idea that poor God, He's not able to do what He used to do.
"I want to tell you, my friend, God is still God. He is not old. He is not sick. And He is not tired. The problem is not with God.... Don't you insult God by saying that [revival] can't happen."
Although Rogers' election in 1979 was a turning point in the conservative movement, it nearly didn't take place. As recounted in Paul Pressler's book "A Hill On Which to Die," Rogers, on the night before the presidential vote, told those around him that he was not going to allow his name to be placed in nomination, believing it was not God's will. But then Bertha Smith, a retired Southern Baptist missionary to China and a well-respected prayer warrior, told Rogers she felt God was telling her he should allow himself to be nominated. Joyce Rogers, his wife, told him something similar. Rogers and his wife, along with Jerry Vines and Paige Patterson, subsequently gathered in Rogers' hotel room to pray about the situation.
"Finally, Adrian knew that he had God's direction that he should run for president of the convention," Pressler, another leader in the resurgence, wrote.
Conservatives, who had driven to Houston in droves that year, elected Rogers on the first ballot over five other candidates with 51 percent of the vote. The second closest candidate received 23 percent.
"He was always a reluctant candidate," Pressler told BP. "He loved preaching more than leading the convention, which spoke to his humility."
Rogers chose not to be a candidate again for president in 1980, saying he wanted to spend more time with his church and family. Conservatives, though, kept winning the presidency. In 1986, with 40,000 messengers registered in Atlanta, Rogers again allowed his name to be placed in nomination and was elected with 54 percent of the vote. In 1987, in St. Louis, messengers re-elected Rogers with 60 percent of the vote. Throughout his service, Rogers promised only to nominate people who affirmed Scripture's infallibility and inerrancy.
"He was the center of everything that the conservative movement did," Pressler told BP. "We looked to him for leadership and we looked to him for inspiration. The conservative movement would never have succeeded without Adrian Rogers. Southern Baptists owe him a great debt of gratitude."
Rogers' greatest contribution to Southern Baptist life in his latter years may have come as chairman of the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message Study Committee. In one its most controversial moves, the committee chose to remove language from the 1963 BF&M that stated, "The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ." Although the phrase was placed in the 1963 BF&M as an affirmation of the truthfulness of all Scripture, it eventually came to be used by some moderates as a way to pit Jesus' words in the Gospels against the rest of Scripture.
"Jesus Christ cannot be divided from the biblical revelation that is testimony to Him," Rogers told messengers in Orlando in 2000. "We must not claim a knowledge of Christ that is independent of Scripture or in any way in opposition to Scripture."
Rogers said the BF&M affirmed the exclusivity of the Gospel.
"Given the persuasive influence of postmodern culture ... we are called to proclaim Jesus Christ as the only Savior, and salvation in His name alone,” he said. "Baptists thus reject inclusivism and pluralism in salvation, for these compromise the Gospel itself."
Born in West Palm Beach in 1931, Rogers graduated from Stetson University and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He served as pastor of Parkview Baptist Church in Fort Pierce, Fla., and Merritt Island (Fla.) Baptist Church before moving to Tennessee in 1972 to serve as pastor of Bellevue Baptist, which had already been home to two well-known preachers in R.G. Lee and Ramsey Pollard. Both had served as SBC president.
Over the past few years, I have had to say farewell, to some of my life’s greatest mentors. In January of 2002, I helped bury my own Pastor. Pastor Marnese Hampton who served his church for close to fifty years. He discipled me and taught me to have a pastor’s heart.
Just a few weeks earlier, I had heard of W.A. Criswell’s death at age 92. Criswell was, like Dr. Rogers, one of my greatest heros in the ministry and a marvelous mentor in the ministry.
Yesterday, November 15, 2005, earth relinquished it’s hold on Adrian Rogers and Heaven welcomed him home. He stands now in the presence of the One who saved him, called him, and blessed his ministry for 65 years. I recently heard Dr. Rogers say, “I am looking forward to that day when I shall see my glorious Savior face to face in Glory.” He no longer sees in part, but in whole. He looks into the face of his glorious Savior Jesus Christ.
All of these men of faith still live in us in a thousand beautiful and precious ways. F.L. Hosmer expressed it well for us in these meangingful stanzas:
Friends Beyond
I cannot think of them as dead,
Who walk with me no more;
Along the path of life I tread—
They have but gone before.
And still their silent ministry
Within my heart hath place,
As when on earth they walked with me,
And met me face to face.
Their lives are made forever mine;
What they to me have been
Hath left henceforth its seal and sign
Engraven deep within.
Mine are they by an ownership
Nor time nor death can free;
For God hath given to love to keep
Its own eternally.
--- F.L. Hosmer