 Philip Wise, a longtime pastor active in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Baptist World Alliance, died less than a year after being diagnosed with metastatic melanoma. |
Wise, 60, announced in June 2008 he had metastatic melanoma, an advanced form of skin cancer with survival rates below 10 percent. Weeks earlier he had resigned unexpectedly after five years as senior pastor of Second Baptist Church in Lubbock, Texas.
Following treatment at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., Wise moved in November to Panama City Beach, Fla., and then to Birmingham, Ala., in February, where he went into hospice care.
Before moving to Lubbock, Wise was pastor of First Baptist Church in Dothan, Ala., for 13 years. His other pastorates included Fairview Baptist Church in Selma, Ala., and Morningview Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala.
Wise held numerous leadership positions with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Baptist World Alliance, Alabama Baptist Convention and Baptist General Convention of Texas.
He was former vice president of the North American Baptist Fellowship and served on the doctrine and interfaith cooperation commission of the BWA.
He was a past member and finance committee chair of the CBF Coordinating Council. He chaired the CBF General Assembly steering committee in 2005.
CBF Executive Coordinator Daniel Vestal credited Wise with helping to pave the way for CBF’s acceptance into BWA membership in 2003. Vestal called Wise “a key leader” in CBF, who “represented the best of what it means to be truly a free and faithful Baptist.”
“Philip has left an indelible mark on this Fellowship,” Vestal said. “He will be missed.”
Wise also helped plan the initial New Baptist Covenant Celebration in Atlanta in 2008 and served as moderator for a workshop session.
He was president of the board of Christian Ethics Today and a trustee of Samford University, his alma mater.
Wise earned the Th.M. and Th.D. degrees from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also taught theology and ethics. He completed three years of post-graduate study at Oxford University in England.
He co-authored two books. They included Fundamentalism, which explores the relationship of moderate and fundamentalist Southern Baptists, which he wrote with Fisher Humphreys in 2004.
“Philip communicated the good news of Jesus with uncommon clarity,” Humphreys, a retired professor at Samford’s Beeson Divinity School, said. “He used the gift for leadership which God had given him to build up forms of Christian faith which gave wide berth to the unbelief on his left and the fundamentalism on his right.”
Humphreys said that Wise, in words of the Serenity Prayer most commonly attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr, “always seemed to have the serenity to accept the things he couldn’t change, the courage to change the things he could, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Wise is survived by his wife of 40 years, Cynthia, three children and a grandson.
His daughter, Myra Norton of Baltimore, said for her and her brothers their father was “our hero, our mentor [and] our truest friend” and they were grateful for “many wonderful conversations” they had with him during the last weeks of his life.
“He was the kind of person we strive to be,” she said, “a man who lived his beliefs and taught us that faith, hope and love are about what you do, not what you say.”
A graveside service is scheduled Thursday, April 2, in Andalusia, Ala., conducted by Gary Furr, pastor of Vestavia Hills Baptist Church in Birmingham. A memorial service is scheduled at 1 p.m. April 3 in Reid Chapel on the campus of Samford University. A memorial service is also planned for 1:30 p.m. Sunday, April 5, at Second Baptist Church in Lubbock, Texas, with Hardy Clemons officiating.
The family suggests that in lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship or a scholarship fund established in his name at Samford. Details are available at a web journal for Wise set up by CaringBridge, a non-profit web service that connects family and friends during a critical illness, treatment or recovery.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.