Prayer Journey Flashback: Baker James Cauthen

We are on our Acts 1:8 Prayer Journey, traveling today to Virginia, where we prayed at the International Mission Board's headquarters in Richmond, then went to the Cauthen International Learning Center in Rockville to visit, pray and stay the night before continuing our journey.

The ILC is the place where the missions personnel of the IMB are prepared for service before being deployed to the nations, and is named after Eloise and Baker James Cauthen, former leader of the Foreign Mission Board from 1954 to 1979. Dr. Cauthen was, as Billy Graham once said, "one of the greatest missionary statesmen in American church life." I was in Nashville for a national student missions event in December, 1979, when Cauthen retired, and Keith Parks assume leadership at the board.

Today was a flashback for me, as we prayerwalked the facility here, saw the portraits of the Cauthens, and realized the thousands of missionaries he had helped send to the ends of the earth. I also remembered a December day when Dr. Cauthen sat down with me to talk about missions and seminary.

It was December, 1983 and I was a senior at Wingate College (now University), trying to decide where I should attend seminary. With a call to missions in my heart, I asked Dr. Ron Bostic, one of my music professors and mentors, where I should go. He had just come to Wingate from Golden Gate Baptist Seminary in California, and said I should go there to visit over Christmas break. Even if I didn't attend there, it would be a great experience, he said. So with some borrowed money from my parents, I flew to San Francisco to visit the campus of Golden Gate. After I arrived that weekend, I learned that Baker James Cauthen, who had retired from the Foreign Mission Board a few years earlier, was a guest professor of missions there that term. I thought to myself, "If I could talk to Dr. Cauthen about where to go to seminary, he would give good advice." So, I got the phone number at the Cauthen's campus apartment, and called that Saturday morning. Mrs. Cauthen answered the phone, and I told her who I was and asked if I could see Dr. Cauthen that day. She asked him, and told me that he would meet me at his campus office in a few hours.

I arrived at the appointed time, and met Baker James Cauthen. We sat in his office and, as much as I tried, he would not tell me which seminary would be best for me to attend. I explained my call to missions, but he would not single out one seminary for me. He did tell me though that if he could give me any advice, it would be to make sure that I served in a church the entire time I was in seminary, as pastor, or on a staff position. He said he had learned more in the church he pastored in Texas during his years at Southwestern Seminary than he ever did in a classroom. The classroom experience, he said, was enhanced and made real by the practical experience of ministering in a congregation. (He was right: I did this my entire seminary career.)

I thanked Dr. Cauthen, and we went our ways. I returned home to North Carolina the next day, and decided to attend Golden Gate Seminary the following school year. The fact that Baker James Cauthen had been there teaching was a significant factor in my deciding to attend.

In April, 1985, Cauthen went home to be with the Lord at age 75, completing his missionary assignment on earth. He, and his wife, Eloise, are now part of that great cloud of witnesses that Hebrews 12 talks about, who have traveled and completed the journey we are still on now.

This has been a good day to remember, and to be reminded of the task yet to be fulfilled. Thank You, Lord, for the opportunity to have that moment with a great servant of the Lord years ago, and to be right here, right now, writing this as an associational missionary on a prayer journey at the Cauthen International Learning Center. Our God is an awesome God!