January 14, 2002
Criswell: Great interview, great man
___W. A. Criswell was a reporter's dream.
___The first time I interviewed him--in 1976, shortly after I came to the Baptist Standard--I didn't know what to expect. I had been in on group interviews of him while he was president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1968-70, but I never had been with him one-on-one. On the speaker's platform, he could be rather intimidating. Face-to-face, he was the most accommodating person I everhad the pleasure of interviewing.
EDITOR EMERITUS TOBY DRUIN
___That first time we met, he said, "You, dear boy, what I can I do for you?" He told me to take a seat beside his desk and leaned toward me, pulled out the "breadboard" at its side, rested an elbow on it, and we talked for about a half hour with him about two feet from my face.
___I had many other interviews with him over the years. He couldn't have been more gracious or generous and would answer anything I asked. Of course, he was also well known for making a statement one day and then explaining what he really meant to say the next.
___However, no one ever doubted how he stood on an issue. He defended the inerrancy of the Bible, blasted liberal biblical scholarship and "modernism" and the decline of the effectiveness of churches, as he saw them.
___The church, he told me in our last interview, "is increasingly impotent in secular society today. In western Europe it is as if didn't exist, and that is becoming true in Canada and increasingly true in the North and to my great, great sorrow increasingly true in the South."
___The reason for this, he said, "is because the preachers have turned aside from preaching the gospel. Instead of preaching the gospel and calling men to repentance and teaching the infallible, inerrant, inspired word of God, they are up there talking about social issues, economic confrontations, political issues, headlines, travelogues, book reviews--God only knows what all. They have dismissed prayer services on Wednesday night, and some of them dismiss services on Sunday night. I think the preacher has just fallen away from the truth of God and has become a pawn in whatever social interest might invest his attention for the day."
___He once was reported to have said that if he had his career to do over again, he would be an Independent Baptist. I asked him if that were true. "If you mean by an 'independent' that I would not be in the Southern Baptist Convention, that is not true," he said, adding that being president of the SBC was one of the chief highlights of his career.
___On his 40th anniversary as pastor in Dallas in l984, he told me that if he had it to do over again, he would "just do more of what I am doing. I would pray more and try to be more like our dear Lord. I would try to be inwardly a better Christian. I pray that in the last years of my life I can do that, that I can grow on the inside of my heart--Godward and Christward."
___There is no doubt W.A. Criswell was in favor of the changes that have occurred in the SBC over the last two decades, but I am convinced he was not as heavily involved in the strategy planning of them as many have given him credit. He was too wrapped up in his local church--loving it and wanting it to grow--to be consumed with lesser pursuits.
___Few men have commanded so much attention or had the impact W.A. Criswell had in his 92 years. Few pastors also have had the love of a congregation he experienced at First Baptist Church in Dallas. He died last week. They will miss him. So will I.
___Toby Druin is editor emeritus of the Baptist Standard
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