Beeson Podcast, Episode #547 Reverend Dr. Ralph West May 4, 2021 >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I am your host, Doug Sweeney, here with my co-host, Kristen Padilla. We are delighted that you joined us today for a conversation with one of our most distinguished alumni, the Reverend Dr. Ralph Douglas West. Kristen will introduce Dr. West in just a moment. Before she does let me say how grateful we are for his ministry in Houston and his ministry here at Beeson. Dr. West is a member of the Beeson advisory board, he’s co-chairing our Dr. Robert Smith Junior Student Scholarship Steering Committee, and he preached yet again in Beeson’s chapel service this morning. We can’t wait to share him with you. What a blessing it is to serve the Lord with you, Dr. West. Kristen, would you please let those few listeners who don’t know who Dr. West is in on why this is such a special recording? >>Kristen Padilla: I will. Hello, everybody. We are so glad to have the Reverend Dr. Ralph West with us today. He is the founding pastor of the Church Without Walls in Houston, Texas. We are proud to say he is a DMin graduate of Beeson Divinity School. He’s also married to Sharetta. Dr. West, I’m going to stop there and allow you to say much more about your wife, your family, your church, and about yourself. But let me just say to you, welcome to the Beeson Podcast. We’re glad you’re here. >>Dr. West: Thank you. I’m glad to be here. Good to be home. >>Kristen Padilla: Well, let’s begin really with just your spiritual journey. What led you to faith in Jesus Christ? What led you into pastoral ministry? Well, I was a Christian before I was a Christian. (laughs) You know? I’ve just learned how to say that today and reflected over that question. What I mean by that, I’m like most people. I went to church as a baby, was born in the church, baptized in the church, but came to know a personal faith in Jesus Christ at 15. And that was a result, actually, of observing the lifestyle of somebody who became my best friend, Rufus Durand Smith. He pastors Hope Presbyterian Church now. The largest Presbyterian Church in North America. A multicultural church. Nobody could do that but him. And I can remember, on my knees, saying, “Whatever Rufus has got, Lord, give me that.” That was my prayer of salvation actually. My calling, it’s interesting talking about leading in the pastoral ministry. I always ask and have to qualify when people listen and keep in mind when I started my journey preaching 45 years ago in the African American tradition it was only one option and that was preaching led to pastoring. We knew nothing about youth ministry, children’s ministry, high school, middle school teaching ministry. That was out. It was either you’re pastoring or you’re not. Thankfully, it has changed since then. But I also felt not because it was a traditional obligation, I actually felt as a young man in college that pastoral ministry would probably be the route that I would go. I always wanted to teach, but I felt that my gifts would probably lead me more to the preaching ministry, the pastoral ministry. And while I was in college under one of my pastors who really taught me what it means to have a shepherd heart. So, that’s kind of my journey into pastoral ministry. >>Doug Sweeney: Dr. West, when I introduced you this morning in chapel I alluded briefly to the story of the Church Without Walls. I think that’s such a fascinating story. Such an encouraging story to all kinds of people: church planters, people who love the advance of the gospel around the world. Could you share a little bit with our listeners in more detail than I was able to give them when I introduced you? >>Dr. West: Yeah. Like most births it was birthed out of a travail. The picture that comes to mind this afternoon is Moses leading God’s people and they get to the Red Sea or the impasse. And they have one or two or three options. They can move forward, standstill, or go back. And 33 years ago I was called to a church, maybe a little longer than that, 37 years ago – called to a church where it was an older church, a historic church in our city. It was in a prime area called Independent Heights. I was very young as a pastor. Probably had more grit and girth than I needed as a pastor. I wanted to move forward. It was evident that ... I think that they would move forward ... I can say it this way now, that they could move forward. I didn’t know how to be patient to wait for them to catch up with ambition. Those who are pastoring I would say it doesn’t always mean that people won’t follow, it takes time for people to cross the Red Sea. It’s always somebody saying, “Let’s go back. It’s better there.” They know that’s not the truth, it’s just that the familiarity of the past catches up with them. And the uncertainty of the futures poses real problems. So, I felt that it was time for us to go in different directions. I certainly wanted to go forward. Now, I look like ... When you hear the story of our church, I come across as a person who is a strategic thinker. I’m not. I mean, I think out of the creative side of my brain, period. I have to rely heavily on people who are very mechanical and technical and tangent. If I don’t have that kind of person who can put the hands on it, I can’t do it. I can vision, but I lack what it takes to write down, spell it out, detail it. So, it looks like when you look in the rearview mirror and say, “Look at these moves.” Well, every move in those early years was nothing short of a supernatural intervention. To move into an area where there were no churches. The city hadn’t moved out in northwest Houston. We’re still one of the few churches out there. I had no idea when I planted the church that 75% of my members lived in that area that I growing up in the city never even drove out to. I didn’t want to go into that area. I didn’t know anything about it. It turned out every move to be the right move. And so there was but several factors that go into it. One, of course, the blessings of God. Another one was timing. I’m a native Houstonian. I had great grace with a lot of the church fathers in that city. But I planted my church at a time, too, where people didn’t leave that church to come to your church because you were the new flavor on the block. So, what they did, our city was growing so fast they would tell people there’s a church out there where you are. And so people would just come to our church. For years I think more than 55%, 60% of our church were not from Texas. They certainly weren’t from Houston. The number was higher than that at one time. And it’s probably still like that. So, we had great grace, favor and grace from the church fathers, proper timing, blessing of God. Then it was also a time, you remember, church growth became the big topic that was going on. This is in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. C Peter Wagner and McGavran were the hot items. He was talking about his third wave and charismatic affect that it had upon churches at that time. Though we were not on the wave, the mist was certainly spread in our face. So, our church was kind of cutting edge because you’re young and you’re a seminarian, you’re bringing on now young men and women involved in staff, ministry. Even though, bless their heart, you couldn’t pay them nothing. But you had the vision. This person is over children. This person is over youth. This is over high school, middle school. Then I had a great relationship with seminary professors. And I would just bring them down periodically and they would help shape and teach my Christian education, my discipleship, help me disciple the men and women that I had Then there was a big time where they had this thing, this big discipleship program, 13 weeks that had just really come out and was getting big. We were heavy into that. We had so many people involved in those bible studies that we, today, can determine who the longest members are, are the people who have been there the longest by the bible they carry. If they have the old discipleship bible and it’s green, then we know that they’ve been with us since 1990, 1991, 1992 – that kind of thing. If they’ve got leather on the back of it, we say that’s a newcomer. That’s something that showed up at 2000 and something like that. And it has been nothing short of a miraculous journey. It’s been a lot of fun because it started with just a handful of people, about 32 people. And it started in my wife’s grandfather’s house where we had our first meeting. And from that we had our first church service and it was at the Brook Highland Marriott Hotel. My first baptism was in the swimming pool. By the way, we didn’t do this to try to be young radical and trying to be different. My brain doesn’t function like that. People were uniting, confessing Christ, and we needed to baptize, so we just asked the people at the hotel if it’s okay if nobody’s in the pool that we could just have it for this time. We’ll baptize them and get them right out. So, we weren’t trying to make a statement, weren’t trying to get coverage, “Oh, they’re baptizing, this new church ...” We didn’t do any of that. We just tried to accommodate based off of what the needs were. I really believe that kind of innocence that we had is some of the reason why God was able to bless the church. And that was another thing. We were very clear in the early years not to confuse marketing with evangelism. That’s another term that became real big in the church growth movement. We said “evangelism” but what we really started doing was marketing the church to attract other people from churches to come to our church. And as a result that’s was we call evangelism today. The average church doesn’t grow. [inaudible 00:11:38] does a great critique on that when he talks about what church growth looked like in America. 75% of the churches in America die. 25% are growing. The 25% that’s growing is growing because it’s killing the 75% that’s dying. So, the reality of most of these churches when you look up and you say, “How many baptisms and how many confessions of Christ?” Now they almost have none. So, 30 some odd years ago you had one on one evangelism, CWT, you had four spiritual laws, the spirit filled life, you had Billy Graham’s thing. All of that. One on one evangelism. Now I think the statistic is it takes 33, 34, 35 people in a congregation to win one person to Christ. I still hold to that the Lord saves. I’m really trying to knead my church to stay on that. To say we don’t want other people’s members. We just don’t want them. We understand people transition, but I mean, let it be a real transition like we moved on the other side of Houston. If you know the terrain of Houston you can’t be on the other side of Houston. It would take you an hour to get to the other side. I can understand when people say they don’t want to be closed in. But I’m not talking about ... that’s normally not the case. People, even in those situations typically they stay where they are. People are just looking for entertainment, ideology, feel good. I’m on my soapbox now. But I really do advocate for evangelism. I mean, just people who confess Jesus and follow him as a disciple. I really hold to that. >>Kristen Padilla: Well, the Lord has really blessed you and your ministry, growing the church from an initial 32 people to what is now three campuses today. The Church Without Walls has such a vibrant ministry. I wonder if you can share with our listeners, give them an inside look into pastoral ministry? My dad is a Baptist pastor. So, as a daughter of a pastor I kind of know the inside world of a pastor’s life, but there are many listening who do not. I’m wondering if you can share about pastoral ministry and in particular I know there are particular challenges to leading a large church. What would some of those challenges be and what has pastoral ministry looked like for you? >>Dr. West: Pastoral ministry for me in a large church looks like the partnership of a lot of people doing a lot of things. Again, I grew up where the pastor was the solo. And so those that are listening and you say ... it’s kind of back and forth ... it’s because things are so different today than they were then and when I started. When I began, if you could just preach that guaranteed you were going to grow a church. That’s not the truth anymore now. When I speak of growing a church I’m not talking about numeric’s, I’m talking about health. How do you have a healthy church? So, one of the things ... early on, the first sermon series I preached in my church was the first 12 chapters from the Book of Acts. By the way, I had never preached a series of sermons. I had never heard anybody preach a series of sermons. Well, I heard one person who had preached a series of sermons. But I didn’t have a clue how you do it. But what I did know is the first chapters dealt with the church in her infancy. So, I was just trying to draw principles from the church when she started and say, “Church, we need to do these things. We need to witness. We want to be empowered by the Holy Spirit to bear witness in the world. We want to preach in his name. We want to lead men and women to repentance. We want to care for the people in our ...” All that kind of stuff. And I didn’t do a good job on the preaching at all. But I was trying to pass it down to the people to say, “This is what we’re trying to do.” This is not the background that I’ve come out of either. I’ve come out of a very strong preaching background, but that’s not the kind of background [inaudible 00:16:02]. That was kind of where I wanted to go. The big thing that would be my driving force, I will say to the church, “I don’t want to happen to us what I’ve seen happen throughout church history.” You have a prominent pastor, an influential pastor, grow the church, and then when he dies the church dies. I’ve seen that all my life. I didn’t want that. I started working hard at that. And I become a solo pastor, I’m telling you ... Because I’m not going to be 27, 28 years old forever. I’m not going to be 38, 48 forever. I’m going to age. And if we’re not growing an maturing then it won’t be any way that we’ll be able to sustain a healthy growth. So, let me ask a question. I’m a preacher, so it takes me a little time to warm up to get where I’m going. It looks like pastoral ministry for me in our setting, and I like to say things like that for me because again I know pastors who have significant ministries and they use that ministry as a template and then people run off and try to imitate it, tear up their church and get in all kinds of trouble. So, for me, I rely heavily on support. That’s how I do it. For instance, pastoral care. James Harris is the pastor of pastoral care. What that man does with pastoral care is unbelievable. I couldn’t do it. There’s no way in the world I could care for those people without him. He cares for them. He’s developed a team of people and have discipled them to help care for those people. Our Deacon Family Ministry, that’s what we call them. We put the Deacons where they’re supposed to be. Care for the congregation. We put families under mature believers who can pray and care for those people. And they’re held responsible and accountable. You have to do this. You’ve got to call them. So, that’s the first thing. A lot of people. And those lot of peoples (laughs), those lot of peoples is in every area like that. With youth, I mean, Tyrone leads the youth. Tyrone is an ex-NFL ball player for the 49’ers. He’s asked every year to join some NFL team to be the defensive quarter. I asked him to do it so we could go hang out at the games. But he won’t do it. He will not do it. He’s built a team to work with those youth. Rosalind with the children. Sharetta, Mrs. West, with the women. And then the different groups in the women’s ministry. So, pastoral ministry looks like, for me, that if I didn’t have those tenables, pastoral tenables, caregivers, supporters reaching out into the congregation I couldn’t get anything done. It affords me the ability to preach and to teach. I’m backing up on that even now. So, now it’s looking at ... I haven’t even announced this to the church, but they’ll get it soon. We’ve been rebuilding and building our preaching team. So, I’m moving my preaching schedule down to 55%, maybe 60% and the other 30% will be for the preaching team along with maybe 10% for when you have guests coming in and things like that. Special services. But to move back, to give myself time in these last years to re-develop leaders, and then develop new leaders, and then bring on that preaching team people who can be next generation kind of people, who can talk to the next generation. The Lord is still giving me a great appeal to attract young people. So, while that’s happening I want to put somebody down that we can start preparing for the next generation. So, pastoral ministry in a large context for me looks like a lot of people. It looks like Ephesians 4. That’s what it looks like. It looks like equipping people to do the work of the ministry. >>Doug Sweeney: What about during COVID, Dr. West? I’ve been in a lot of conversations with pastors recently about how their churches are dealing with COVID and was in one today and you know, a lot of people in the media are speculating as to where we’re going to be in a year from now. Is it going to be possible for our churches to return to the way they were before COVID? How have things been at the Church Without Walls? How have you navigated the COVID epidemic and what are your plans for coming out on the other side of COVID? >>Dr. West: That’s a great question. One advantage we had is that we were already wired and geared for media. I had already moved to do staff meetings the way we’re meeting now. What’s funny, when I was meeting one year ago we were on Skype. (laughs) Now everything is Zoom. We were already kind of geared up for that part. Absent the building being empty. So, COVID has been interesting, it really has. My initial days, March, April was the same, it didn’t bother me much. I laugh because the cathedral was empty. I didn’t pay much attention because I just knew we would be back in 8 weeks, 12 weeks. So, I mean, I can put up with 8, 12 weeks of major inconvenience. Everybody take a hiatus. Had no idea when we got to May, June that ... We were meeting with epidemiologists in the CDC in a meeting every Monday. One of the ladies in our church who was on the team was keeping us informed. When they started talking about it’s a possibility we won’t get back till September. It wasn’t alarming, but I said this is different. Then in June it pushed back to, “You might not be back in church for the new year.” Well, leading up to that we had already began to say we need to make some adjustments. Some real, real adjustments. And so we made those adjustments because even when we started cutting back with ten people ... mainly sound, lights, maybe an instrumentalist, praise team, people were contracting COVID. So, we had on three occasions where the instrumentalist contracted COVID, then you had people that was on the praise team. So, we don’t know where it is. Is it on the surface? Is on the air? One thing we know, we never downplayed the reality and the significance of it. Firsthand, we just learned this is a mysterious virus that we need to be careful about and very, very careful about. Then of course we had people in our congregation that contracted COVID and died. So, it altered everything we did. Funerals, and that became a big issue because initially we were not doing funerals, but then we just had to knuckle down and say, “We’ve got to take every precaution we can. These people cannot feel the cathedral, feel the church, be in God’s Kingdom in this service, and we can’t send them home from home and they can’t even be around their family. So, we started taking precautions, working with different funeral homes, and doing that. And then pastoral care. Now you have to minister to people ... because you can’t get to the hospital. So, we have a good working relationship with the chaplains. Then we had it with the nurses, but they were overwhelmed. They couldn’t do anything. On one hand they’re trying to admit, they’re trying to care for them, and now they’re quarantined. It just became a mess. Things seems to be quieting down somewhat now. So, we experienced the same thing, I guess, that a lot of other churches did. Now, how do we go back? We don’t know. I’m vaccinated. My staff is vaccinated, at least 90% of them are. I think that our Deacon Family Ministry people, most of them are vaccinated. So, we wanted to start saying, “Well, maybe we can incrementally start moving people back in.” Because you can get a lot of people in the cathedral and spread them out. Soon as we start planning ... Now, we’re still planning that right now. But with these new strands that’s coming out ... people are nervous. Everybody is nervous. It’s affected preaching in a major way because normally I pride myself in preparing weeks and weeks, at least 12 to 13 weeks at a time, three months, four months at a time. That’s been difficult to do. Because now every so many weeks something new comes up. Where you’re encouraging, you’re saying trust God, have faith, rely on his providence, God will take care of you. So, it’s almost cyclic the things that come cyclical where you say, “Okay, I’m comfort over here, encouragement over here, patience over here, anxiety here, fret not here, don’t worry there.” I was just getting ready to start trying to cast a sermon series for the ... and I said, “That’s not going to work right now, not with what’s going on.” Then you add not just to the ecclesiological issue, you can’t overlook what’s happening socially and culturally in America. So, that becomes a major issue. What are the fall outs of that going to be? What’s the repercussions? But it’s a great time to be alive. [inaudible 00:26:55] says the living of these days. I tell them it’s a great time to be alive. Because if you have to pray more and trust more then I think you ever have in our era of Christianity in America. You really have to pray and trust right now. >>Kristen Padilla: Dr. West, I said at the beginning that we are proud that you are part of our alumni and that you received your doctorate of ministry degree from Beeson in 2004. I’d love to just hear about your relationship to our school. What led you to Beeson and how your time has shaped you and your preaching and pastoral ministry? Also, just your friendships that you’ve developed here over the years with Dr. Smith and so many others? Could you share with our listeners about your relationship with Beeson? >>Dr. West: I’d be glad to. I was in Mobile, Alabama preaching for Julius Shrugs at First Baptist. He used to be the President of National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. He was not that at the time I was just invited down to preach for him. In those days you had the old leadership magazine. So, I’m thumbing through and I keep seeing “Beeson.” I see this dome. And “Beeson.” I’d never heard of Samford. I later found out that a friend of mine who pastors in Miami went to Howard University before it became Samford. And so I said, “Okay, this is the school he’s always ...” Because he always talked about his school. I just said, “Man, it’s a pretty campus.” Because I hadn’t heard of it, I’m still young at this point, I didn’t know that they had a school like that in Birmingham, right? I mean, it’s not role tide, so I’m in the car looking through leadership and I see Dr. Massey in there. Massey taught me preaching at Princeton when I was doing a class there. So, I said, “Oh, Dr. Massey is there.” I said, “Let’s go, because I knew if he was teaching or preaching there it’s a real place.” I know it’s a real place if Massey is there. I drive down there, I arrive up on the campus and I’m floored. I’m like, “This is one beautiful place.” I’m like, “Man, never seen it.” I left it alone. Then I kept saying, “I need to go do some more studies and this kind of thing.” Then I saw that Beeson launches a DMin program, but they have an emphasis on preaching. I said, “That’s what I want to do. I want to do something in preaching.” Well, at the same time when I’m enrolling Robert Smith is here. Now, I don’t know Bob well at this time but I heard him when we were at Lorietta. I said, “Man, this brother is waxing eloquent. He’s doing his thing.” And then Calvin Miller was here. Calvin, that was my main man. So, I said, “Man, this place has some substance to it.” Then I knew of Dean George and then got to know Frank Thiel and Ken Matthews and all this group. So, I said, “I’m going there.” They accepted me. I got in. Ken Matthews was the first person I sat across the table with and it was just a great, great journey. A great pastoral and academic and scholarly journey. I wanted to go somewhere where I would be challenged. I knew I would with those people. I knew that I would not be ashamed and I wouldn’t make them ashamed. Over the years I’ve just developed those relationships with them. I’ve had a good time. I can go on and on about those friendships. >>Doug Sweeney: Speaking of Beeson, Dr. West, you know we try to get you here as often as we possibly can. I’m trying to get you here all the time speaking into the ministerial formation of our students, the next generation of pastors of our churches. So, while we’ve got you on the line, even though it’s just a podcast, a lot of students, a lot of ministers are going to be listening to this. Speak into ministerial formation at Beeson Divinity School for just a few minutes. >>Dr. West: Yeah, you’ve got a great place. You really are a great place. I don’t just say that because I’m an alumni. I say that now where I am, it’s one of the great places. Here’s what you get. One is you’re going to have what I like to call devotional scholarship. That is you’re going to be challenged intellectually by warm hearted men and women who have a real love for God in the church. And you’re going to need that if you’re talking about entering in pastoral ministry. The last thing the church needs is a pastor that’s not warm hearted and cold and indifferent to his or her people. That’s the first thing. So, you’re definitely going to get that warm hearted, I like to say that, that warm hearted devotional scholarship. The other thing that you’re going to get, you’re going to get some great hands on practical ministry. People that teach it, but they themselves are involved in the church world. That was one of the things that I always enjoyed whether it was with Calvin Miller or whether with Fishers Humphrey, or with Dean George. And my favorite statement would be when one of them couldn’t do something because they were teaching on a Wednesday morning at a bible study at the church for that class. I thought that was incredible. That shattered every image. I use that for every preacher that believes that they are beyond teaching a class. I said, now, if you can get Dean George to go teach a bible study class, not the church-wide study ... Calvin Miller who could go preach anywhere on the planet whenever he wanted to do it, Fishers Humphrey, Mr. Theologian, to teach a class. So, you’re going to get that - the intellectual, you’re going to get the practical. Then using that word formation, your life will be shaped spiritually in that place. That was one of the things I enjoyed, too. Chapel was chapel. And then of course the covenant groups that started developing where people would pray and interact with one another. I strongly recommend it. >>Doug Sweeney: Kristen, if I could ask a follow up with Dr. West. I know it’s your turn to ask a question, but I’m really interested to know, Ralph, if you were here at Beeson all the time, and you got to raise up a whole generation of pastors, what would be the main things you’d want the young students to know about pastoral ministry and how to be faithful in pastoral ministry in our day today? >>Dr. West: One is love God. I was asked one time about, in a preaching class, preaching. I said, “Well, first of all, you need a bible.” Everybody started laughing. I didn’t laugh. I let them laugh. I said, “If you find that humorous then you might need to go check in another class. The last thing we need is another bible-less, text-less, scripture-less sermon. If all you’re doing is peddling your ideas, your opinions, they won’t last.” I feel the same way about that in pastoral ministry. Love God. I mean really love God. When you love God the vision of God broadens, it gets bigger. It’s that saying I think they say about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and he and somebody ... I’ll say before we retire for the evening let’s just go out into the garden and stand there, look at the stars, and Roosevelt turns around and said, “We’re small enough now.” It’s when you look up to the heavens and you’re able to sit down and say, “We’re small enough now.” I’m small and God is large. Love God. That would be the first thing. The second thing I would say is live in the scriptures. Learn to live in the scriptures. If you’re going to do pastoral ministry let the scriptures shape your pastoral vision. Let it shape your counseling, how you communicate with people. You mentioned friendships. One of the things that I observed from Dr. Massey was that he lived in the scriptures. He really lived in the scriptures. I don’t know Peter Parish well but I met him through Dr. Massey at Princeton before he came there to teach. So, Massey and I were talking and I called him “Dad.” Bob would call him, “Dad.” That’s our connection with Dr. Massey, we called him “Dad.” Peter Parish was there and of Dr. Massey he said, “You know what he’s going to do, Ralph?” I said, “No, sir.” He said, “He’s going to pray.” He said, “As long as I’ve known him from Detroit to now and from Detroit he had been from Detroit to Alabama to Anderson, you know? Nothing interferes with his time of prayer.” I have coveted that forever. Love God, live in the scriptures. Live in the scripture, give you a big vision of God. It will shape your heart for how you have to go about doing ministry and caring for people. Then I think the last thing I would simply say is take it serious. Take it serious. I mean, there’s a lot of joy in ministry. Those of us in ministry, we laugh more than anybody and we cry more than anybody. But take it seriously. I mean, really, really take it seriously. I’ll stop there because I could go on and on. But those would be a few things I would say. If you’re going to be in it, be in it. It’s not a hustle. Be in it. That’s not where you come to see where you can make money, get rich. The Lord will take care of you. Be serious about it. The labor [inaudible 00:37:34]. I remember one time I had gone out to preach and I thought that I was wronged and all that kind of stuff. My pastor could be rather Solomonic. I was waiting on him, since I’m one of his favorite sons, to jump in, like, “I can’t believe that anybody would do this.” He never said a word. When I got through waiting on him to come to my rescue. Saying, “I’m going to call Reverend So-and-so ...” All he said to me ... He looked at me, he said, “I want you to remember two things. Number one, you don’t have to go back again if they invite you.” Then he said, “Secondly, God always makes it up on the other end.” That was it. I was waiting on more, but I lived on them words, “God will make it up on the other end.” >>Kristen Padilla: Thank you for that pastoral wisdom. We always like to end the show hearing what God is doing and teaching in your life. As a way of encouraging our listeners. You’ve already encouraged us so much, but I wonder if you can encourage us a bit more and share what has God been teaching you these days? >>Dr. West: He really has. My son came to me, the youngest one is preaching now and he was invited by one of his classmates to participate in this service called the Seven Last Words. That’s where seven preachers are given one of the last words of Jesus on the cross and they’re supposed to preach on that word for 15 minutes. So, he talked to me about it. I said, “It’s been a long time since I’ve just sat down and tried to just look at those words as stand alone’s.” I have some free time after going through my hard deals. I was sitting down. This will give me time to do something. So, I started reading up on it. Then I said, “Wait a minute, let me get an audible commentary.” So, I found some sermons on the seven last words. I listened to 28 sermons. When I got through listening to them I knew less about the seven last words than I did when I got started. It was absolutely some of the worst preaching that I had ever heard on the planet. Irresponsible. It was anthropocentric, humanistic. Everything was us. And I’m being very serious. And that affected me in such a way. I asked myself if I were a brand new Christian and I needed to know what God had done for me in Jesus Christ would I have learned anything after those 28 sermons? And I said, “Almost nothing.” In that moment I felt a new conviction to study more. That’s what God is teaching me now. You have the gravitas and the influence to be heard. Study more. Not for information in a sermon just to be informative. Not for somebody to just sit down and say, “Oh, he said this.” Mm hmm (Negative). Study ... It goes back to my whole thing in the back, the more you study about God the more you know God. I think that’s what theology is. That’s why we have Beeson. The more you study about God, you know God. And I want to know him. That’s what the Lord is really shaping in me now. I want to know him more. My pastor said that once and I thought he was a genius. I still do. He’s a blessed memory now. He was about 58 years old and he started crying in the pulpit, “I wish I had known more.” I’m like, “You can’t teach him anything else.” I know exactly what he means now. You get here and you say you’ve got that much. You haven’t gone to the depths yet. You haven’t gone to the depths. That’s Calvin Miller’s great sermon on the depths, the book he wrote on that with his grandson, going out to the Barrier Reef, walking miles out. Miles and miles. Then it just drops off into the deep. He said, “That’s how we come to God.” And that’s where I feel the Lord is leading me. “You’ve been walking in two feet of water.” I just want to know him now and talk about him and love him. >>Doug Sweeney: Amen. I do, too. And I cannot think of a better way to conclude this interview than that. Thank you, Dr. West, for being with us. Listeners, you have been hearing Dr. Ralph West, the founding pastor of the Church Without Walls in Houston, Texas, and a dear friend of Beeson Divinity School. Thank you very much for being with us. Goodbye for now. >>Kristen Padilla: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and, myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.