God Was Calling Me to This National Missions Position

So Why Were They Talking to Him?

Photo by Brendan Beale on Unsplash

God Was Calling Me to This Nation Missions Position

So Why Were They Talking to Him?

Burtt and I shared a room at our Baptist conference center outside Santa Fe, New Mexico for a week during the summer of 1980. We were attending Home Missions Week. The annual training and inspiration sessions for Great Commission ministry.

During that week the staff of our national missions agency talked with Burtt about joining their team as the national consultant for metropolitan areas of more than one million in population.

Burtt was the Baptist missions director in Baltimore and had previously been the city missions director in Philadelphia. It was natural they would talk with him. He had good ministry experience in large urban areas.

Throughout the week, we talked about this offer. Burtt wanted my advice about the role and bold strategies he could implement through this role. He hoped to increase the Great Commission’s impact in these metropolitan areas.

I was glad to talk with him about this possibility. In my heart, I had some of the same passion for ministry. Especially for this same opportunity.

I did not even know this role existed until Burtt told me about it. In reality, it was a new role that had never existed, yet one that immediately resonated with me.

Was I jealous? Somewhat. Yet it went farther than that in my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I kept wondering why they were talking with Burtt about the national missions position to which I instantly felt God was calling me.

However, I suppressed these feelings and helped my long-term friend discern God’s call to this role. I never mentioned my passion.

An Almost Twenty-Year Background

I attended Burtt’s wedding 18 years earlier. I was only 12 years old. His wife was a close college friend of one of my sisters who was a bridesmaid.

Three years later when my father was director of Southern Baptist missions work in southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey, he recruited Burtt to direct missions work in the city of Philadelphia.

When Burtt began this ministry, he was about the same age then that I was in 1980 when we were talking and praying about the national missions role for him.

Burtt was aggressive and charged forward in his new role. He was known to pull his Volkswagen Beetle over in the middle turn lane of a busy street to chase after cars with license plates from southern states to check if they were Southern Baptists.

He divided the city of Philadelphia into 12 zones and assigned each of the 12 core members of a new congregation meeting at the YMCA to start something in their zone. Amazingly, two of them did.

Burtt’s strategic thinking was not always on target, but he faithfully used a “ready, shoot, aim” approach. This made him inspiring, a lot of fun, and frustrating all at once.

My father always said he would “rather hogtie an out-of-control radical than kick a lazy person in the seat of their pants." (This reminds me of my upbringing. I only got kicked—figuratively speaking—a few times as a teenager. I was never hogtied.)

Twelve years after Burtt came to Philadelphia, when he was now director of Baptist missions work in Baltimore, I came to Maryland on a two-year internship to work with churches in contextual transition in Baltimore and Washington, DC.

I was assigned to a desk in the same office as Burtt. This allowed us to have two years of mutual ministry. It took our friendship deeper.

It was natural that after 18 years of friendship and service as ministry colleagues that Burtt and I would end up rooming together. Talking and praying about his next role in ministry.

What Happened?

By the end of the week in New Mexico, daily negotiations between Burtt and the national missions agency broke off. At that point in his ministry, Burtt had several aspects of the role that were very important to him. They became non-negotiables.

I returned home from that week convinced I would hear from the national missions agency at some point. I never spoke a word to anyone about my spiritual and emotional feelings for this role.

I understood there were significant challenges in this ministry position. Also, I had turned down the director of this area of ministry for a role with him two years earlier. He was very angry at me then.

About a month later my telephone rang. It was this director. A few months later God’s call became a reality.