Funerals of saints bless the living. That definitely was the case Nov. 13, when family and friends gathered to celebrate the life and witness of Mary Kerr Johnston Piper, known far and wide as Miss Katy.

Funerals prompt two responses in my soul.

First, I cannot fathom how unbelievers face death. Humanly speaking, death is the ultimate permanence. How anyone contemplates what’s next without assurance of salvation and promise of God’s presence compromises comprehension.

And second, when we gather to remember the life of a Christian, I cannot help but rejoice. This especially is true when that person lived a long life, which was true for Mrs. Piper, who was 93. Deep down, it’s also true for Christians who are generations younger, because where they went far exceeds where they were. Of course, we grieve because we will miss them. We sometimes grieve because their earthly lives seemed to hold so much more. But we really grieve for ourselves and our loss, not for them and theirs.

Some funerals, such as Mrs. Piper’s, transcend those feelings; they point toward particular truth. At her memorial service, we celebrated the grace, beauty and power of a life totally committed to Christ. Or, as she would have said and speakers acknowledged, two lives totally committed to Christ. Her memorial would not have been complete without remembering and thanking God for her husband, Paul, who preceded her to heaven almost nine years ago.

God gave the Pipers the ability to make money. They transformed a John Deere dealership and plow factory into a diversified company with 1,000 employees and 15 manufacturing plants. But God also shaped their tender hearts with the passion to use their wealth as an engine for multiplying ministry and presenting the Christian gospel around the world.

At Mrs. Piper’s funeral, longtime friend Bill Nichols noted they started their business with $17.50 and achieved their dream of making annual distributions of $17.5 million through their foundations, Christ Is Our Salvation and Christian Mission Concerns. Kent Reynolds, executive director of the foundations, said they gave away about 90 percent of all they ever earned to missions, education, benevolence and other Christian organizations. He cited 34 of them, including Baptist Standard Publishing and the Baptist General Convention of Texas, and their biography lists more than 90.

“The word that best describes Katy and Paul Piper is ‘generous,’” Reynolds said. Nichols reported Mrs. Piper’s life reflected spiritual sensitivity, simple contentment and humble faithfulness. These traits and their generosity will continue, because they trained their family well.

You and I probably couldn’t give away $17.5 million in many lifetimes, much less one year. But we can be faithful stewards—a worthy legacy.

I cannot remember the last time I heard anyone talk about Christians being called into ministry. Shouldn’t we intentionally urge young people to consider ministry as a vocation?

Your question reflects a growing realization of a subtle, yet significant, shift in modern church dynamics. Not so long ago, there was a major emphasis on responding to God’s call to “special service”—usually interpreted to mean a calling into vocational ministry. The invitation to respond to such a calling was provided in most worship services as regularly as the call to conversion or church membership.

Although not completely abandoned, the call to surrender one’s life to special service has become much less emphasized in today’s church services. As a result, there has been a drastic downturn in the number of Baptists, particularly young people, enrolling in ministerial programs. Even within these programs, the number of people pursuing a vocational ministry track is diminishing. Recent surveys show, at the present rate of decline, within a generation there will not be enough vocational ministers to staff existing churches, much less be available to staff church starts.

Several reasons account for this decline in emphasis. In recent years, vocational ministry has become less respected by society in general and the church in particular. A newspaper article from the 1960s detailed the sudden death of a local pastor. Of particular interest to me was the note that the local businesses “on the square” would be closing during the time of the funeral in honor of the pastor. Such honor is not normally accorded to ministers today.

As church members have become more educated in theology and biblical studies, and as information has grown easier and faster to attain, even the church has lost some of its respect for the minister. In many cases, ministers are seen as little more than low-level employees of the church. The result of this diminishing respect has been twofold: Many people have no desire to enter such a profession, and many who already are in that position have no desire to encourage others to join them. Thus, the emphasis on ministry professions declines.

Combine that with the proliferation of high-profile ministers who have had various moral and ethical failures, and add to it the negative atmosphere of arguing and fighting that has defined denominational and congregational life, and the result is professional ministry simply is not popular. Then, with the relatively low pay scale, the disintegration nears completion.

Churches and vocational ministers need to regain the sense of importance in calling out people to the ministry. A reclamation of the divine call as the motivation for ministry is needed. The focus must move from the negatives to the immense positives of following God’s call. Only then will we shift from the decline as it exists now.

Van Christian, pastor

First Baptist Church, Comanche

Right or Wrong? is co-sponsored by the Texas Baptist theological education office and Christian Life Commission. Send your questions about how to apply your faith to bill.tillman@texasbaptists.org.

Hello, Texas Baptists. With Thanksgiving upon us, I’d like to use this opportunity to say thank you, Baptist General Convention of Texas family, for allowing me the opportunity to serve you. I remain honored and humbled to serve as your executive director. I’m grateful and blessed.

I have two announcements to share with you at this time. First, our longtime faithful, dependable and loyal executive assistant to the executive director, Myla McClinton, will retire at the end of this year. She was a blessing to my predecessors and has been so to me. It is a joy to work alongside her. Please join me in wishing her well.

Now, secondly, taking her place will be Elizabeth Biedrzycki. She currently serves Texas Baptists in our communications division and will move to her new position Dec. 1. I am so pleased she has agreed to work alongside and have full confidence in her ability and spirit. Now, join me in saying, “Welcome!”

These last couple of weeks have been busy, but good. I made my first trip to Alto Frio Baptist Encampment in Leakey and spoke to the Lost Maples Senior Adult Conference. Beautiful place! Thanks to Camp Director Mike Wilson for the invitation (www.altofrio.com).

Your Baptist Building staff was blessed in our November chapel service by a great message delivered by Paul Powell, dean emeritus of Baylor University’s Truett Seminary. So well done. And then, Kathleen and I enjoyed hearing him again at the retirement dinner for Lynn Craft, president and CEO of the Baptist Foundation of Texas.

I thank Cody Knowlton, president of the Baptist Health Foundation of San Antonio (www.bhfsa.org), for allowing me to speak to their board of directors recently. They are doing good work.

What a joy it was for me to preach the Sunday morning service at Bluegrove Baptist Church. Bluegrove is 10 miles west of Henrietta. Great church!

More next time. Happy Thanksgiving.

David Hardage is executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board.

Awhile back, my wedding ring went missing. Since that time, there has been much searching and discussion.

Luke 15:8 quotes Jesus: “Or what woman, having 10 silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it?”

The urgency with which we initially searched for my ring sounds like this woman who has lost a coin. Since my lost wedding ring has been the topic de jour for prayer and ponderings for over awhile, I wonder if the Lord is trying to show me an area of my life where I am missing the mark.

One morning, I awoke at 3:30. I assumed the Lord and I would talk about my ring. He rather preferred to discuss lost sheep and coins.

I wasn’t sure how to pray. Only he can save the ones he brought to my mind. What is my part? Are there conversations to be had? Truth to be spoken? Love to be shown? Mercy and grace to be lived out demonstratively? Power in which to pray? Of course. A sinner am I.

I know people who seem lost. They would call it wandering or taking their time or not needing any directions. But sometimes, the lostness shifts and takes on lonely, perilous shadows. As if they have fallen into a pit, and it is no longer a matter of “which path.” They fully realize there is nothing within their own power that can save them at all. They need Someone to come to their immediate rescue.

“All we, like sheep, have gone astray ….” As one rescued from the deep pit of self-centered striving, I must be mercifully motivated to offer a helping hand to those who need salvation.

If I had to choose … to live comfortably with my wedding ring securely around my finger, talking to God about my day and my darlings and my debt to him or to live within the yearning for something lost being found, while every glance down at my hand would trigger urgent thoughts to pray for and fight for and search after those who are lost, … I would choose never to find my ring.

“And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 13:9-10).

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33).

Cari D. Johnson enjoys sharing stories and songs, but not her ginger snaps. Her family of eight worships with Immanuel Baptist Church in Marshall.

Church-growth experts and demographers have been proclaiming cultural and generational shifts for several years. Television coverage of the 2012 election results underscored what the Barna Group and other data analysts have been telling the American church all these years but which many American churches have failed to comprehend or appreciate.

According to political pundits, Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election because he appealed to a constituency of Americans that no longer constitutes the majority of voters—even if their cohort still is large enough to produce a close election. The Gallup organization’s research revealed Barack Obama received significant majorities of women, Hispanic and young votes, not to mention significant numbers of other so-called minority groups. As the political commentators talked about these figures throughout election night, camera shots of the crowds in Boston and Chicago only seemed to confirm the polls.

Pundits also repeatedly referred to “the ground game.” Obama’s strategy for winning both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections involved street-level community organizing engaging large numbers of field offices with large numbers of campaign volunteers, large numbers of grassroots donors, and a significant presence on Facebook and Twitter.

A theological way of describing Obama’s strategy is “incarnation.” Obama put himself where the people are and found ways for a broad base of support to find ownership in his campaign. He spoke their language, and it won him two presidential elections. Regardless of how you feel about Obama or his policies, you simply cannot argue with his campaign strategy.

For me, watching the election coverage was less about politics than it was a realization of the power of demographics. When I read about what some call the Millennial generation, I see the future of the American church—a future more present than many seem to realize. Millennials comprise the largest generation in American history, surpassing the Baby Boomers, who occupied the fantasies of Madison Avenue for the last couple of decades. Millennials increasingly are non-white, unmarried and educated. Millennials also tend to be more community- and family-minded and less risk-averse than their forebears. They also are mostly digital-natives.

The Obama campaign understood and appreciated the cultural shift in diversity, communication and expectations taking place among both the Millennials and the larger American culture. The Romney campaign did not. I wonder if we in the American church understand and appreciate the cultural shift happening all around us. Are we taking seriously our society as it is becoming, or are we so convinced in the veracity of our presentation that we are ignoring an audience that is ignoring or turning away from us?

Watching the cameras pan across the two different crowds in Boston and Chicago, I saw what happens when cultural shifts are taken seriously. I also saw a chilling vision of the future of the church in America. I saw that as long as American churches continue to “preach to the choir,” they will steadily lose ground as their constituency decreases. And I wonder: Who will incarnate Christ among the new majority? Thankfully, many are incarnating Christ among those people.

As it goes for the Republican party, so it goes for the American church. If American evangelicals continue engaging the population as Republicans did over the last four years, I expect evangelicals to become increasingly irrelevant in a society obviously becoming more diverse by every measure.

There is, however, at least one flaw in my premise. Presidential campaigns are about winning. Being the church is not. Our campaign already is won. Being the church, then, is about being the body of Christ and embodying his good news and hope in an ever-changing world. Furthermore, the church is not a political campaign, despite the shenanigans of some in ministry. And Jesus is not up for election.

However, inasmuch as the American church tends to borrow secular marketing and growth strategies, the 2012 presidential election serves as notice.

Eric Black is pastor of First Baptist Church in Covington.

“I would rather be able to appreciate things I cannot have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.”

Elbert Hubbard

Writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher; 1856-1915 (businesspundit.com)

“There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.”

O. Henry

aka William Sydney Porter, short-story writer; 1862-1910 (brainyquote.com)

“Pride slays thanksgiving, but an humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.”

Henry Ward Beecher

Congregationalist pastor, social reformer and abolitionist; 1813-1887 (quotegeek.com)

“Thanksgiving dinners take 18 hours to prepare. They are consumed in 12 minutes. Half-times take 12 minutes. This is not coincidence.”

Erma Bombeck

Humorist and newspaper columnist; 1927-1996 (goodreads.com)