You have to go out.

You don't have to come back.

by   Mark Coppenger                                                                                                                                     Vol. X, No. 7, August 1997

     President, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

In January, I had occasion to visit a maritime I museum in Astoria, Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River. As you might imagine, the place was stocked with all sorts of old nautical gear—lighthouse lights, row boats, compasses, uniforms, sailors' kits, flare pistols, and such. Among the many photos was a group of three which featured coastal rescue squads. The caption heading read, " You have to go out; you don't have to come back"

I'd heard that motto in some devotional context, but I figured it was apocryphal, or at least marginal. Turns out I was wrong. It served as a key expression in the U.S. Life-Saving Service (1878-1915), a precursor to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The meaning of the slogan is simple. Your decision to cast out into the surf is based not on calculations of your own safety, but on the peril of those at sea. There are no guarantees that you will make it back. Never mind that. You have to attempt the rescue.

I bring the devotional analogy forward. In serving God, in answering his call, "We have to go out. We don't have to come back." (Of course, "going out" may cover any faithful I response to God's leading, to include staying put or preaching a certain sermon.) We don't need a solid calculation of consequent fame, financial security, camaraderie, and success before we say "yes" to God. This is the sort of spirit that drove Isaiah to say, "Here am I. Send me," before hearing what "package" the Lord had for him. It's the same spirit that compelled Abraham to get up and go to a place yet to be revealed, the same spirit that spurred Paul to go over into Macedonia without any promise of physical safety or comfort.

It is, I fear, a spirit that dwindles in our day. Professionalism and careerism are eating up the abandon of the early church. At the 1997 SBC meeting, the seminaries [focussed] on the call of God. Sadly enough, our willingness to answer that call often depends on its passing our grid of druthers—income; schools; proximity to family; obvious growth potential. We've turned the slogan on its head: "You don't have to go out. You have to come back."

We talk of the spiritual crisis in America—flaunted lesbianism on Ellen; partial-birth abortion; gang violence; influence peddling the breakup of the traditional family. Yes, these are dreadful, but they are thoroughly predictable behavior for lost people. What, though, shall we say of the stifling careerism of the supposedly regenerate? If the salt loses its savor. . .

How many times have you heard, "We'd (They'd) like to hire him, but we (they) can't touch what he's getting now," "Where's he going to go? He'll never find a package to match the one he's getting," "We're going to have to increase the salary and benefits to get the sort of man we need," "We were interested, but we couldn't afford to go," or "We'll need such and such income before we can consider it." I know I've heard them hundreds of times, (and, sadly, even said something like that to a New England search committee member in 1983), but it's not Bible talk or Bible sentiment.

It's odd that we think it not at all strange that a doctor making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year will surrender to medical missions, taking a 90% cut in pay and comfort to serve the Lord in World A. Is there a double standard? Do foreign missionaries have one spiritual economy and the ministers back home work as mercenaries, hired guns available to the best bidder? If we are mercenaries, then there is just the one call, the call to ministry. After that, we're on our entrepreneurial own, credentialling, positioning, and publicizing ourselves to the best of our abilities.

Of course, we can dress it all up in fine language— "Extending our ministry," "Caring for our family," "Making the best use of our talents." But isn't it far better to let God "extend our ministry" and "care for our family" through His particular leading? Maybe those kids of ours need a sold-out father more than easy access to a college education and the fruit of the fashion industry.

At Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, we are particularly committed to educate God's servants to biblically evangelize and congregationalize the Midwest/Great Plains region. God grant us the spiritual wherewithal to stir the spirit of the U.S. Life-Saving Service in our students.

Dennis Noble's That Others Might Live (Naval Institute Press) tells the U.S. Life-Saving Service story. In it, we read that the lifesavers had neither retirement nor disability programs, even though they worked in the most dangerous and difficult conditions. They had low pay, little chance of promotion, and no housing allowance for their families. Living in isolated coastal regions, they and their wives and children had little access to physicians and hospitals. Yet their ranks were full.

On December 18,1885, the Ephraim Williams of Providence, Rhode Island, was headed for Savannah, Georgia, with a load of lumber when she hit a rough storm. The seas were "running mountains high," and the ship became waterlogged, out of control. She eventually ran aground northeast of Cape Hatteras Station.

Under the direction of Station Keeper Benjamin B. Dailey, the [rescue] crew "stripped off any clothing that might impede them in the event of capsize" and shoved off into an "almost unbroken wall of tumultuous water .... The waves were so steep that witnesses on the beach could at times see the entire interior of the boat, and there was a real danger of the surfboat's pitch-poling, that is, being flipped end-over-end."

It took the seven men two hours to row the five miles to the ship. They faced great difficulty in transferring the crew of nine to the lifeboat, and then they had to negotiate a perilous return to shore.

The Gold Life Saving Medal citation read:

I do not believe that a greater act of heroism is recorded than that of Dailey and his crew on this momentous occasion. These poor, plain men, dwellers upon the lonely sands of Hatteras, took their lives in their hands, and, at the most imminent risk, crossed the most tumultuous sea that any boat within the memory of living men had ever attempted on that bleak coast, and all for what? That others might live to see home and friends. The thought of reward or mercenary appeal never once entered their minds. Duty, their sense of obligation, and the credit of the Service impelled them on to do their mighty best.

They had to go out.  They didn't have to come back