I attended the annual meeting of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society on the evening of May 22. Nine days later Julian Pentecost died. The timing was somewhat providential for me because I was thinking about Dr. Pentecost on that May 22 evening. That night three young people shared with the congregation their testimonies on who had had the greatest influence on their understanding of what it meant to be a Baptist. As I sat there, my thoughts turned to Julian Pentecost, my mentor in shaping my views of the Baptist identity.
I entered one of our Southern Baptist seminaries in the fall of 1979 and as a student from Virginia received each week a free copy of the Religious Herald. I began reading Dr. Pentecost’s editorials. What a masterful scrivener! Whether one agreed with his positions or not, there was no denying that the man was intelligent and erudite.
I continued to read Dr. Pentecost through the years and was privileged to be serving his home church, Lawrenceville Baptist Church, at the time of his retirement in 1992. It was from Dr. Pentecost’s writings that I became not only aware of, but thoroughly educated in, the great Baptist principles that have defined us over the past 400 years.
It is not my purpose here to enumerate or discuss what those precious principles are. It is my purpose, however, to say “thank you and job well done” to a mentor, a man who let me write Sunday school commentary for the Herald and who became a friend who, after much assurance, finally convinced me it was okay to call him Julian.
Kirby D. Smith, Chesterfield, Va.