Courier Conversations
This Podcast of Courier Conversations will be a conversation of topics with a variety of guests that concern, inspire and inform Christians about current events Worldwide. We hope you'll find our stories informing and encouraging in your daily walk with Christ.
Courier Conversations
The Power of Christian Friendships in Ministry
What if a strong friendship rooted in faith could transform your ministry? Join us on Career Conversations Now as we reveal the vibrant new format with co-hosts Jeff Robinson and Travis Kerns. Celebrating a 25-year friendship that began at Southern Seminary, we kick things off with some friendly football rivalry—Travis, a die-hard Clemson fan, and Jeff, a Georgia Bulldogs enthusiast. But beyond the banter, we dive into serious issues affecting the Southern Baptist and South Carolina Baptist Conventions, from theology and culture to politics, all while keeping the discussion accessible and engaging.
In our latest episode, we explore the profound impact of biblical Christian friendships, drawing on historical examples like John Newton and John Ryland, and George Whitefield and John Wesley. We discuss how these gospel-centered relationships shaped their ministries, providing a rich framework for understanding the vital role of trust, humor, and humility in our own friendships. Reflecting on our experiences with friends like Phil Newton and Brian Payne, we underscore the value of sincere, gospel-centered interactions. Tune in to learn why these friendships are not just beneficial but essential for impactful ministry.
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Welcome to the brand new Career Conversations Now. The Career Conversations podcast is not new, but we have a brand new format we're going to introduce to you today. My name is Jeff Robinson, I am president and editor-in-chief of the Baptist Courier and Publishing Company, and I have with me a longtime friend. We're going to talk a lot about this today on this introductory episode Travis Kearns. Travis, tell them who you are and we'll talk in a few minutes about why it'll be you and I from now on piloting this podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm Travis Kearns. I'm the Associational Mission Strategist, former title Director of Missions, title before that of Associational Missionary for the Three Rivers Baptist Association here in Greenville. Yeah, and Jeff and I have been friends a long time, so hopefully this will be a fun conversation to have every month.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the reason I chose Travis is because of our friendship. I mean, we've been friends for what? 25 years now.
Speaker 2:Yes, since 2001.
Speaker 1:We were students at Southern Seminary together. We used to tease each other when we were doctoral students at Southern Seminary. I was a church history student, you were a Graham School student and of course we know that was always a fun little rivalry that we would enjoy ribbing each other about our respective studies, our workload.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm waiting on the coloring book comment. We'll work that in some other time.
Speaker 1:But really our friendship. I mean Travis and I probably my wife guessed that you and I text each other 10,000 times during the year, most of it's during college football season, that's probably about right.
Speaker 1:And so just as we thought about a new format for the Courier Conversations, I got to thinking about a co-host and you came immediately to mind because one. You're a trustee with the Baptist Cour Courier and we're grateful for your service there. It started earlier this year, so just a few months into that service. But also just the nature of our friendship. We talk about serious things, we debate serious things and argue at serious things, but we also laugh a lot.
Speaker 2:Yep, we do.
Speaker 1:And not that this is going to be the comedy hour or a new Seinfeld or anything like that, but we enjoy our friendship and so I think that's why I've chosen Travis, because I thought it would be a lot more user-friendly I guess is the right way to say it in terms of listening. We'll enjoy our time together and we hope you'll enjoy it as well. We're going to talk about a lot of different things serious issues, issues within the Southern Baptist Convention, within the South Carolina Baptist Convention, issues facing the church. We'll talk about political issues, probably a little bit. We'll get into theology and Bible and culture, probably a little college football and Travis can tolerate my college football allegiance and I can tolerate his. So, travis, why don't you tell us about that? That's also a subject of many of our talks and our texting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd love to. So I grew up in Greenville, and because I grew up in Greenville and my dad did as well, my dad was a Clemson fan, so I grew up a Clemson fan, and because I'm a Christian, I'm also a Clemson fan. So it's interesting that poets of old, when they discuss heaven, they use orange and purple, and when they discuss hell, they use red and black usually garnet and black specifically, though. So we can exclude Georgia at least a little bit from that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean, I'm a hardcore Clemson fan. I've got my wedding ring is orange, my watch band is orange, my truck is white, except for orange accents. So yeah, I'm very much Clemson through and through. If you prick me, I bleed orange.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the thing about you, Travis, is you're not a guy who halts between two opinions when it comes to anything. No, I'm not Much less your college football allegiance. I don't know, and I've told many people this, and your friends all say this about you, so you should know this. I don't know that I've ever seen anyone despise his team's rival with as much gusto as you do.
Speaker 2:No, I do not like the team in Columbia. I refuse to even say what it is. I won't say the mascot. I'll always call them the lame cocks and laughingly I usually jokingly say if the Taliban played them, I'd put on a turban and chant in Arabic.
Speaker 1:So there you go, the subtle, the extra subtle Travis.
Speaker 2:Kurtz, about as much as Jeff loves the Florida Gators and the Tennessee Volunteers, I have love for that school in Columbia.
Speaker 1:We could have gone the whole episode without you mentioning either of those places either of the schools, and everybody knows by now that I'm a dyed-in-wool Georgia Bulldog lifelong fan, grew up in North Georgia, graduate of that blessed university.
Speaker 2:So I guess, because you're a graduate from there, we'll use in this podcast small words. We'll talk real slow.
Speaker 1:Just don't do math. Okay, that's right you throw two at two that will really confuse me, Because over in Athens we don't do math, we just do words. Over there.
Speaker 2:You do math by sevens when you score touchdowns.
Speaker 1:Oh, we do that's and black are representing hell. I mean, we hope when we show up in your town that's what you're going to get you know.
Speaker 2:So I don't really mind. Well, again, it's more. It's more garnet and black than red and black, specifically garnet.
Speaker 1:Maybe true, of course, I have no problem with your rival. So, uh, we've always had a friendly rival with both Clemson uh and uh and South Carolina.
Speaker 2:Oh no, it's my turn.
Speaker 1:I said Listen we're in South Carolina. So just settle down, it'll be fine. Just back, slowly away and take deep breaths, it'll be just fine. But no, so this gives you a little bit of a flavor of our fellowship over the years. Of course we're both in ministry. We love the Lord, love seeing people come to Christ, love the Bible, the things of God, and so I want to talk about all those things and more, and probably get into a little football before it's all over with. And we're going to publish on the last day of the month. So look for us on the last day of the month we're getting.
Speaker 1:Consistency been highly inconsistent, so this is a complete relaunch of Career Conversations. We will have guests sometimes. We'll talk about books. We both love to read, we're both bibliophiles with large libraries that we like to talk about, and so we'll talk about books. We'll have guests on from time to time, especially Baptist Courier authors who write new books. We've got three new books out on our new 1821 line. We'll have all those guys on here at some point, probably interview them, grill them. I might talk a little football with them. I know Tony Wolfe, our friend down in Columbia, is an LSU guy. Bless his heart. You know I've got to get into that. So Georgia and them have had a pretty nice little rivalry over the years and Tony and I will always laugh about that. So it's going to be, I think, a good variety of things and again, we hope this will be something you enjoy.
Speaker 1:And today we're talking a little bit about friendship, just briefly here. Christian, the topic of Christian friendship, and I think hopefully it goes without saying that you'd have all Christians that are friends. But I'm thinking specifically here of Christian ministry. The worst advice I ever got as a pastor in my first full-time ministry ministry my first full-time pastor it was I had an old preacher tell me and he meant well, but he said here's something you cannot, you must not do. You must not have friends in the church, don't have friends in your congregation, friends of the elders, friends of the pastors great but not friends in here. How do you respond?
Speaker 1:to that Travis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's. I understand where he's coming from.
Speaker 2:Let me put it that way, right, right, and I understand, but I think it can be very dangerous because it can—just a couple of things come to mind.
Speaker 2:First of all, I can set the pastor apart from the congregation in an unhealthy and I think, maybe even in an unbiblical way that he's somehow more holy than more Christian than everybody else in the congregation. Therefore he can't be friends with other people. However, as I said, I understand the point, because some pastors don't want to look like or seem to be normal people to the folks in the congregation. They want to seem like they are somehow closer to God, like there's a red phone to heaven in the office. I think it also can tend to lead sometimes to favoritism in the congregation or at the very least make it look like there's favoritism because you might be closer friends with couple A than you are with couple B, or with deacon X than you are with deacon Y or whatever it may be. So again, I understand the sentiment and while I can appreciate the sentiment, I think it drives an unnecessary and potentially unbiblical wedge between the pastor and members of the congregation, or the elders if it's a multiple elder congregation between them and the congregation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with that and you're right, he meant well, this is a really good man who said this, useful in God's kingdom for a long, long time Now in heaven and a friend of mine for a long time.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I agree with that completely and I do think he wanted to avoid favoritism, that kind of thing, a little bit of an older school, if you want to call it that view of ministry.
Speaker 1:But I found that in my churches I would naturally make friends with some and others and I think the congregation understood that. And even on my elder board, the church I served in Louisville for almost a decade one of my best friends in the whole world was one of the guys I served with there and we were probably closer than the other elders, even though I was close to all of them and probably closer than the other elders even though I was close to all of them and I don't think anyone and the other elders thought they, you know, felt slighted or anything like that, just naturally, you know, we both had similar backgrounds and just, he's a tennessee fan and uh, but uh, yeah, I know doug william, you know, you know doug, yeah, that's right. And still to this day, very, very dear brother and christ learned a lot from him, uh and so. But I don't think it was causing friction of the other other elders, so just let that happen naturally, but pastors need friends?
Speaker 2:Sure they do. I can say from being an associational leader that more than 50% of our job is listening to pastors having a hard time being a listening ear. I don't think that having friends in the congregation would fix that, because a lot of times pastors need to come and vent about people in the congregation. You can't vent about people in the congregation to people in the congregation, so you need somebody outside of that. However, yeah, pastoring is very likely the loneliest job on the planet. I remember for years teaching at Southern and at Southwestern, saying to students that pastoring is the hardest and loneliest job on the planet, because people who hate you tell you every day and people who love you never say a word.
Speaker 2:If you had more friends in the congregation, you would have people telling you on a regular basis, if not, or at the very least showing you on a regular basis that they care for you. They care for you as a believer, they care for you as a pastor, they care for you as a husband and as a dad and as a brother in Christ. And again, it also brings me back to kind of thinking through what it would mean for a pastor not to have friends. Because if we're going to look at the New Testament. You see Paul say imitate me as I imitate Christ. You want the pastor to imitate Christ and then show his congregation how to be Christian to each other. If he doesn't have friends, then they have no real measuring rod, so to speak, as to how they should have Christian friendships. You want the pastor, as much as possible, to be the mirror of Christ to the congregation and I think biblically based friendships in the church is a good way to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you certainly have scriptural precedent for that. You have Paul and Timothy. Of course Paul was kind of a father in the faith to Timothy, but all the epistles, most of them, end with almost like say hello to this person, hello to this person. And of course, in the Old Testament you have David and Jonathan, very clearly dear, they're almost like brothers. And so church history is you see Paul and Barnabas, you see Paul and Luke. Yes, you do, that's right. Yeah, I mean, church history bears this out. You have John Newton and John Ryland. John Newton, the author of Amazing Grace and a pastor only in England, and John Ryland, close, close friends, and they had a correspondence.
Speaker 1:We have those, all those letters now from Newton to Ryland and it shows just a close brotherhood you had George Whitefield and Wesley and they were one was a Calvinist, one's an Armenian, and they would, they'd go back and forth. It was kind of like you know us and our football Football's on our board and that was. But they once asked very famously George Whitefield, do you think you'll see our brother in heaven? He said I will not. And of course they were asking since he's an Arminian, he's going to be in heaven. He said I will not see you in heaven because he will be so close to the throne that I will never see him, because that's how much respect he had for John Wesley and preached his funeral and all things like that. So you have Andrew Fuller, one of our great Baptist theologians, kind of the rope holder of the modern missions movement. He was friends with John Ryland and others, and so yeah, it's important.
Speaker 2:You can look at the South Carolina Baptist history and will and look at Boyce and Broadus.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Who were obviously close. Yeah, look at Williams, who was close with those two.
Speaker 3:Obviously.
Speaker 2:Crawford Toy was, but then fell off the wagon in a very bad way. But seeing again, even in South Carolina's history you see Baptist leaders exhibiting biblically-based friendships.
Speaker 1:It's funny you mention Toy. There's Toy Street just right near me. You know the streets here, at 100 manly street, they're all named after brought us, and mainly in boys and and of course boys. His family owned a lot of this land here. But I always joke with tom nettles and I want to drive backward down toy street to bring it, bring it back to orthodoxy. You know, because because voice was so broken, broken when when toy went, uh, departing the faith and embrace theological liberalism, he was very broken. It wasn't. You know, it's with distance. It's kind of easy for us to be cold about that and say, well, they just distant, they didn't it was just walk up and down the street reading Genesis.
Speaker 2:Maybe that'll help Embrace those first two chapters of Genesis the right way.
Speaker 1:That's right. So yeah, it is. It is, and I know as a pastor myself having those friendships. There's times, as you said, when I really couldn't talk to anybody else or just needed to be encouraged and I could. I mean, doug was always a call. I've got one of my best friends over in my hometown in Georgia. We've been friends for 35 years and he's pastored. He's likely been through it and if something I was going through I would call him. And some of you know Phil Newton is one of our career authors of our new 1821 line, one of the new books, and Phil's been on my what we used to call speed dial. But he's been on my phone for a long, long time because Phil has been a pastor what 40 plus years and every time I went through something I'd call him, something I hadn't seen before, and he'd say, oh yeah, I remember XXX and he was always there to help me and he'd say oh yeah, I remember XXX and he was always there to help me A mutual friend we have in Brian Payne.
Speaker 1:Oh my, yes, you know BP as we call him, old Alabama football player.
Speaker 2:But yeah, what an encouraging friend he is to both of us, right, right, except during football season we don't encourage each other as much, but it's very ironic that he played at Alabama all four years and was a grad assistant, but now he church in Auburn.
Speaker 1:That is. That is, we love Brian, we're thankful for him, but we, we, we take a certain relish in that, don't we? So, uh, so, yeah, I and uh, I, I'm, I'm thankful. That's something I really thank the Lord for. Often, his friends like you, friends like Brian and Doug and Bill and those others I've mentioned here just very thankful for that because they enrich my life. And even laughter I mean in ministry laughter we'll do an episode on this someday because laughter is so important. To be able to laugh at yourself, because it is heaven and hell are serious things and you deal with that all the time, but having a friend who can remind you that you're not all that in a bag of chips and you laugh at yourself, that's infinitely valuable Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, and you see in Scripture plenty of places where Jesus is obviously very serious. Paul and Peter are very serious, but they also laugh together. They have a good time, they fellowship together. You know, maybe not so much when Paul's writing Galatians with Peter, but that's not exactly a laughing moment. But he's serious and when he can have a good time he does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right, and Charles Spurgeon, I think, is a model for friendships. He had friendships, but also not taking yourself so seriously. Again, that's another episode, for another time probably, but yeah, that's something that I think younger pastors, that one piece of advice if I were just now going to ministry I would want to be given would be to find those relationships both inside your church and outside your church.
Speaker 2:I think it's important to mention too, when you talk about Christian friendship, is non-Christian friendships. You can understand when a joke comes that it's probably not going to be from the best of intentions, or when something is said, it might be said with an evil heart. Christian friendships are completely different because they're based in the gospel and I think one of the most difficult issues and dangerous things we can deal with in Christian friendship is making sure we're not sarcastic for the sake of being sarcastic with friends. Jeff and I rib each other all the time, and I do with other friends. I know, Jeff, you do the same thing, but sarcasm tends to drive wedges because you can say something while being sarcastic and it might be taken the wrong way but you sometimes might mean it very negatively. So I think that's another almost like a virtue of Christian friendships to be very cautious of.
Speaker 1:That's right. A few years ago I wrote a book about talk what the Bible says about communication and talk and one of my categories in there is sarcasm and sarcasm. You've got to be careful of that, because it tends to build me up and make me look clever and tear you down so it's a joke at your expense. So Christians have to be really careful. I mean, as long as it's good-natured, I mean we're sarcastic in a good-natured sort of way, but we know where it's coming from, because pastoring, like you said, is hard enough and you also need friends though that can correct you if you need to be corrected who love you enough, have known you well enough to say look, you need to straighten out in this either doctrine or some kind of behavior, or ask you questions.
Speaker 2:I've heard this about you. I've seen this in you or here's a blind spot. We all have blind spots and that's very important, you know, to have a friend who can say and who you've given permission to to say, hey, here's a spot you need to work on, or here's something I've noticed. In the same way, you know, you can respond and say, well, here's something I've seen in your life that I've noticed Not responding to what that person might have said to you, just to respond to defend yourself. But you've given each other permission to say those things.
Speaker 1:That's right, and we all have blind spots. Sure, and they're blind spots. Because they're blind spots, right, I can't see them. But if Travis comes to me and say, hey, you need to get straightened out over here, and it's not about my football team or your Chevrolet or my Chevrolet or my Chevrolet, that's another. Yeah, this car thing, boy, that's a big one and it always comes up. But I think that helps me to say you know you've got this. You know it's like your wife is good at that because she knows you better than anybody.
Speaker 1:I remember once my wife, when I first started preaching, my wife said what are you angry about? It was after I preached in Indiana one time and I time and I said what do you mean? He said you looked really angry up there. So what do you mean? So just the look on your face, you have this sneer and it makes your preaching come out as angry. And that's not your personality. You take the gospel seriously, so you don't take much else seriously. True, and friends sometimes can show you those blind spots and you love them enough and trust them enough to say, hey, you need to change your demeanor up there a little bit, because you seem really angry and so friends are. You know that's something we all need and I'm grateful to have had friends like you and it'll be enjoyable, I think, to do this podcast and I think hopefully our readers listen to me. Our listeners will understand that friendship and that will come through. So that's why we thought it would be good for the Travis and Jeff show, but we're still the Courier of Conversations.
Speaker 1:Yes right, because we serve the Lord Jesus and not Jeff and Travis. So look for us the last day of the month. We love to hear your comments. If you like this, please like us and follow us or share us on all the social media platforms Facebook, instagram, twitter, now called X. I'm always going to call that Twitter because X is just a really strange thing to say. So follow us on all those things. Like us. If you're listening to us on the Buzzsprout app, you can leave a message. Or if you have a question, please leave that. We will try to answer that in the next episode. We're not clear about anything. Sometimes we can be or I know I can be as a history professor a continent of mud, and so if you've got questions, please leave them. We'll do our best to answer them. So we look forward to this. We think it's going to be enjoyable for us and hopefully we'll help encourage healthy local churches in South Carolina and beyond, for the glory of God, amen.
Speaker 3:We're glad you joined us for Courier Conversations, where we are informing and inspiring South Carolina Baptists and beyond. For more information about these topics and more, subscribe to our e-edition or go to our website at baptistcouriercom. The Courier is located in Greenville, south Carolina. As a multimedia ministry partner of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. To comment about today's podcast, email us at conversations at baptistcouriercom. This podcast, produced by Bob Sloan Audio Productions,
