Cruising with God

Ed. Note: Let me say from the beginning that Henry Blackaby has done more for the kingdom of God than I have done, or likely ever will do. He has excelled at his work and has built a tremendous ministry that contributes daily to the lives of thousands. I have not. Not to put too fine a point on it, he wrote Experiencing God while I write about dead tadpoles.


Since Henry Blackaby was recently mentioned on both Dave and Kevin’s sites, I was reminded of a brief seminary story that was probably my biggest gaffe while there. In addition to another job I had in seminary, I also worked in Robert’s library at SWBTS. Working in a library is great for bibliophiles and libraries are pretty low stress environments.

Usually.

Early on in my time in the library, I came across an advertisement in the Baptist Standard for an Experiencing God cruise. People paid a lot of money to go on a cruise and study through Experiencing God. The big draw on this particular cruise, as I recall, was that Henry Blackaby would be directing this group on the cruise. So the big selling point was that you could go on the cruise and learn about experiencing God straight from the horse’s mouth.

But studying Expereincing God on a cruise struck me (at the age of 23) as particularly heinous. The idea of engaging on a spiritual retreat while cruising through the Alaskan Sound gazing upon glaciers sounded more like mammon than godliness. My aggravation over this began to simmer and I started grousing about it to my cowowrkers. I then began to talk to my coworkers about the hypocrisy of turning everything over to God and “Finding where God was at work and then joining him there…on an Alaskan cruise.”

I then unleashed a terrific jeremiad that included not only Blackaby, but the entire Baptist Bookstore Lifeway chain about how they had marketed the Gospel and concluded with a thunderous statement along the lines of “If Jesus came back today and went into your average Lifeway store I bet he would start overturning tables!” And I cited all of the attendent Experiencing God merchandise as an example.

Now I’m not one usually given to much passion and perhaps I had too much Tabasco sauce that day at lunch, but it was essentially a hot headed rant. After I finished, I noticed that all my fellow librarians were watching me in an awkward combination of amusement and shock. Jim, Amy, Brian and Kerry were standing there in stunned silence.

My supervisor, a gentle soul, was the first to speak “Taran, have you met all of your coworkers?” I found that an odd question since I had been there a few weeks at that time, but I nodded.

“Are you sure you’ve met them all? Have you met…” and then she dropped the hammer

“Kerry Blackaby?”

Oh. No.


Apparently Henry B has several kids who went through Southwestern and one of them was my coworker. Kerry, for her part, grinned and didn’t say a word.

We worked together for another year and she was always too gracious to mention the incident. She was a wonderful coworker and an even better person. Five years later, when I was pastoring at Lone Oak, our Association had Henry Blackaby and his wife down for some leadership training and I met them and mentioned my connection with Kerry. At that time she was doing well and her parents were two very nice, humble people.

I suppose the post-script to this story is that next week I am facilitating Experiencing God at our church….


But not on a cruise.