Beeson Podcast, Episode #672 Dr. David Eldridge Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I am your host, Doug Sweeney. I’m joined today by my good friend and Beeson alumnus, Dr. David Eldridge. Dr. Eldridge has been serving as the Senior Pastor of Dawson Memorial Baptist Church here in Homewood since 2017. And we are proud to say he is a 2004 graduate of Beeson Divinity School. He was with us earlier this semester in chapel where he preached a wonderful sermon for our whole community on the story of Jesus, Mary, and Martha in the gospels on, “The One Thing Needful.” We’re deeply grateful to you, Dr. Eldridge for that. We’re thankful that you could join us today and tell us about what the Lord is doing in your life, in your church, in your ministry. Thanks very much for being our friend, Dr. Eldridge. >>Dr. Eldridge: Oh, Dean Sweeney, it’s a pleasure to be here at Beeson. We love what God is doing in and through you in this wonderful community here. I am a proud graduate of this institution and it continues to shape me till this day. >>Doug Sweeney: Our local listeners surely know all about you. Dawson’s services are on television and one of the responsibilities you bear is to be a little bit of a preacher and pastor to the city of Birmingham. But surely there are some people who are listening from out of town, other parts of the country who don’t know about you yet. Let’s introduce you to them. How did you come to know the Lord? How did God guide you into pastoral ministry? How did we get you here to Homewood? >>Dr. Eldridge: Yeah. So, yeah, that journey would go back to my middle school days. So, a very similar community that I grew up in, a suburb outside of Jackson, Mississippi. And I had some very intentional Christian friends who in the seventh and eighth grade began to invite me to a local church that we could walk to on Wednesdays. When school would end we could walk to the church and play basketball and I was just with friends. And the intentionality of those friends and the way they sort of embodied distinctive Christian example to me was very life-giving. And it really drew me to asking questions of what kind of relationship do they have here that I don’t have. Simultaneous to that I had two adult influences in my life. One was the youth pastor at that church, who really took me under his wing and began to invest in me. Simultaneous to that I had a football coach who was a follower of Christ. And God used these influences to expose me to the gospel, used these influences to model something that was distinctive in life, and so as an eighth grader in my room, without a formal real familial background in the church I understood that I was a sinner, and I had a clarity of my need for Jesus as my Savior, and I trusted him and placed my faith in him then. Two years later, if you would have asked me as a 16 year old what I wanted to do vocationally I would have probably pointed you back to that football coach. And I would have pointed you back to his example in my life. And so we had in this school that I grew up in, I could run to football and I could run home. And so in the middle of running home from a football practice I stopped running and I didn’t see anything in the sky, didn’t hear an audible voice, but there was an undeniable impression that I only really could understand as I’m supposed to do what Harvey does. And Harvey was that student minister who was so influential in my life. To coming to faith and also discipling me in those early years of my life. So, my call to ministry was really that clear to me. I stopped running. I had this undeniable impression. Started running. And really have never really looked back in many ways. God was very kind to me. I think I have learned that over the years many people have a variety of different types of calling to the ministry. But he was kind to me to give me something that was so tangible and so undeniable. And it wasn’t something that I was seeking after. So, I started serving churches as a freshman in college. I was a student minister and had wonderful pastors that invested in me. So, four years in college, that was at Mississippi College. >>Doug Sweeney: Were you a bible or ministry major? >>Dr. Eldridge: I was. I was English and Religion there at Mississippi College. And so then as I knew I felt this calling to ministry. I had wonderful pastors that invested in me. Then I started looking toward seminary. >>Doug Sweeney: All right. How did God get you to Beeson Divinity School? >>Dr. Eldridge: Yeah. Again, it was pretty clear. I mean, at that time I looked over sort of the landscape and I was saved and discipled in a Southern Baptist context. So, really ... then I’m going to college in a Baptist College, so really I had some familiarity with a little bit of the landscape. But on the whole, my options before me were the six Southern Baptist schools that I knew of, and had friends that had gone and attended those schools. And so I probably my junior year of college attended a pastor’s conference and I heard Robert Smith preach. And so when Dr. Smith preached, Beeson really came on my radar. Almost at the same time I’m doing, as a youth pastor, Wednesday preparation for teaching with the students and my pastor was really gracious to let me preach on Sunday nights and those kinds of things. And so the New American Commentary had been published during that season of my life. And Timothy George’s Galatians Commentary was one of the resources that I used. So, really, Dr. George’s influence from a scholarship standpoint and his reputation that I began ... his theology of the Reformers was very influential when I was in college. And then hearing Dr. Smith preach. Those two things really made it a very easy decision to come and visit Beeson Divinity School. So, my wife and I did my senior year of college. And we had been married for about a year. We drove over here for a Preview Day and I was hooked, day one. >>Doug Sweeney: What was your experience like here? I mean, I’m kind of thinking I should ask you ... someone coming to seminary from a Southern Baptist College, a Southern Baptist context ... Beeson, of course, has a lot of Southern Baptist people, but it’s interdenominational as well. What was that experience like for you? Would you recommend it to other Southern Baptist students? >>Dr. Eldridge: Yeah, Dr. Sweeney. It was very life-giving to me. I would say that interdenominational approach where I was able to study with Dr. Bray from the Anglican tradition, Dr. Thielman – Presbyterian tradition, and I could go on ... with giving 20 years ago a lot evangelical landscape of some of the best male and female scholars that were teaching at this institution. And that’s still true today. So, for me, as a Baptist coming into this institution, I think what was very life-giving to me and what was very formative to me was ... and again, this is embodied in Dr. George’s persona in some respects. Unity and the essentials, charity in the non-essentials. Obviously that’s not original with Dr. George, but I think he, along with other institutions no doubt but certainly Beeson, exemplify the best of that. So, it gave me ... I did not leave Beeson less of a Baptist, but I do think I had a greater understanding of the breadth of church history, the breadth of where Baptists fit into that unique story that God was writing for 2,000 years in the church. And I had a greater appreciation I think too of those elements in other traditions that have been so life-giving to millions upon millions of Christians throughout the years. So, that has helped me, it has informed my ministry in every city that I’ve served in. It has always been a real joy to be able to lock arms with other like-minded men and women who are ministers of the gospel across denominational lines. And that hunger and appreciation was definitely birthed, I would say, here at Beeson Divinity School. >>Doug Sweeney: While you were an MDIV student, were you engaged in congregational ministry in town? >>Dr. Eldridge: I was. It’s really interesting ... I don’t know ... Danielle, my wife, and I were talking about this the other day. I don’t know if I heard explicitly here when I came to Beeson or if I just sort of intuitively thought ... I knew I was going into pastoral ministry. I would say for the first six months that we lived here in Birmingham I did not serve in a church. And I worked at a bank and a bookstore. And so for six months we were very, very intentional to go to a variety of churches across denominational lines and it was very life-giving. One of the interesting things that God kind of sovereignly, one of the bows that he tied is that many of the ministers, pastors in these types of churches, whether it was Danny Wood at Shades Mountain, whether it was my predecessor at Dawson, Gary Fenton, whether it was Harry Reeder at Briarwood. They were all pastoring during that time. And so God uniquely gave me the ability to understand a little bit of the breadth of churches in Birmingham from our experience here in 2001 to 2004. So, when I came back to Birmingham we kind of knew a little bit more about the landscape of the churches. Largely because there was so much stability in pastoral leadership across the board. So, that was really helpful. So, after that six months I would say journey through different churches, I started serving at a church north of town in the Gardendale area. My wife was a school teacher. She was teaching at that time in an elementary school in Fultondale. And so we sort of consolidated life, ministry, where we lived. She would teach here, God graciously opened up a youth ministry position and I was able to serve there for really the remainder of the two and a half years that we were here at Beeson. >>Doug Sweeney: Great. If I remember correctly, when you finished at Beeson you took a pastoral position at a church in Mississippi? >>Dr. Eldridge: Yes. So, graduated on a Friday, loaded up a UHaul Friday afternoon and moved to New Orleans the next day. And what brought us to New Orleans was just further schooling and a doctoral program there that I started really almost immediately. Not necessarily saying that I recommend as the best thing to do. But that summer in June I started in that program at the seminary in New Orleans. And we lived for a very short time in New Orleans and then two months later I started pastoring in [inaudible 00:12:19], Mississippi. I would drive 2-3 days a week back into New Orleans for the doctoral seminars and the reading colloquiums and those sorts of things. So, we had one foot in New Orleans for a few years and one foot on the Mississippi Gulf coast as I was pastoring. >>Doug Sweeney: Would you recommend that to others? It’s a little bit of a loaded question. Because I’m talking to seminary students and potential seminary students all the time, who are trying to figure out what it would be like to balance something close to a full time ministry position with something close to full time study. We have some students at Beeson doing that now. Of course it’s difficult, in terms of time management, and if you’re married there’s an extra kind of level of difficulty to it. What was it like for you? Did you feel like it was a really positive thing? >>Dr. Eldridge: I do. I think different churches have different callings. The first church I pastored at 24 as a newly minted MDIV graduate from Beeson, the first Sunday I looked out over the congregation and there were 35 dear saints of the Lord in the congregation in a sanctuary that at one time had been filled with 500 or 600 people that were active participants on Sunday morning in that congregation. And so that church, as I looked at the landscape of those men and women, they were almost all of them old enough to be my grandparents. We had one child in the nursery when we came. I would say that church was uniquely positioned for a young pastor to come in and try to figure out what does it mean to do word based ministry in a people whose best ecclesial days maybe were behind them, from a numerical standpoint. They had seen a lot of transition in that church, a lot of hurt in that church. And it was a wonderful place to study also for what God had called me to do in New Orleans. But also to open up the word of God and to have this balance of that academic rigor to be balanced with Miss Evelyn is in the hospital. And you need to go by and see Miss Evelyn. And I can still remember the names of those saints. We had four deacons and Bill and John and Wayne. To be able to look out at these men and ... these were just sweet memories for me. >>Doug Sweeney: All right, let’s fast forward just a little bit here and get us to 2017. Which I believe is the year when you came back to Birmingham to serve as the Senior Pastor of Dawson Memorial Baptist Church. >>Dr. Eldridge: That’s right. >>Doug Sweeney: There are a whole bunch of things I would love to ask you about that. I’m interested in how the Lord pulled you back to Birmingham and then where I’m going with this is I don’t know a lot about the church you were serving in Mississippi. But I do know a lot about the church you serve here. It’s a unique assignment. It’s a very large church. It’s televised. I want to get some advice from you on what it’s like to be a pastor of that sort of congregation? You also succeeded a beloved pastor who was there for about a quarter of a century, Dr. Gary Fenton. Who our people here at Beeson know because now he helps me with fundraising for the seminary. So, there’s a lot of questions. I’ll ask them one at a time. How did the Lord get you back to Birmingham to such a high profile congregation? What was it like going through the discernment process there? >>Dr. Eldridge: Well, and as you know, those kinds of ... the true answers to those kinds of questions are very long and detailed. So, I’ll try to sum it up as best as I can. We were serving three years at the church that I was called to ministry in and was saved in. So, I was serving previously to Dawson in my home church, which is First Baptist Clinton, which is on the campus of the college that my wife and I attended, Mississippi College. So, previous to that I had been serving about eight years in the north Mississippi area, Tupelo, Mississippi where Elvis was from. So, that’s what it is known for. And we had a long process of discernment to go back to my home church for a variety of reasons. And we realized two to two and a half years into that ministry that we loved those people, but they really needed someone. God had called us to that church for a period of healing. And to have someone who had grown up in that community, saved in that community, called to ministry – it was a beautiful portrait of healing. But some of the hesitations I had about going to the church were connected to long term, longevity of the hometown, young boy who grew up, staying there. And that bore out, they needed someone who maybe wasn’t as close to all the inner workings of relationships that were just so life-giving to me. So, my wife and I began to realize that that door for a variety of reasons was shutting and we began a very intentional process of just praying and seeking the Lord. And that was about a six month process that culminated ... I remember very vividly with us ... and again, I don’t know to what extent this is true for other pastors but there is a sense ... and some of this is just an internal sense that you receive from the Lord as you’re walking through the word and you’re walking in community with your family that very well may be that this door is shutting and you begin to be open to God leading you to another place. And that comes to this culmination of us being at a lunch where she and I are talking and we just felt collectively that we had a sense, and again this is subjective, but a sense of release from our current ministry. That same day, Dr. Sweeney, I found out that Dawson Memorial Baptist Church ... and I do not exaggerate this, this is not a pastoral exaggeration. This is one hour after we find ourselves in a real sense of agreement, one hour later I find out about Dawson. And that birthed the conversation and that was a process of a few months of us meeting with a search firm that Dawson had hired to kind of go across the country and interview. And they were real far down that process. And so I didn’t know anything about that. I had not kept up with the church. So, this really was God’s timing. And God’s kindness to connect our hearts with the hearts of the people at Dawson. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. So, when you settled in at Dawson, my assumption is that the church you had been serving in Tupelo was not quite so big as Dawson is. Neither you nor I care a lot about numbers and size and that kind of thing. But this is something that people in ministry have to think through sometimes. What is it like to settle in at a congregation like that, especially if you’ve not been in a congregation like that before? What did the Lord have to do in you? How did you get used to being the pastor of such a high profile church? >>Dr. Eldridge: That’s a very good question, Dr. Sweeney. I don’t know if I know the most adequate answer to that question. Other than to say that I’ve had the privilege of pastoring a church, as I said earlier, with 35 people and then the next church I pastored had 150 people on Sunday, and Dawson ... there were two churches in between these, Dawson has more than that, no doubt. But there’s so much of pastoral ministry that when you boil it down, there’s tremendous continuity. You’re opening up the word of God week to week, feeding the sheep, you’re leading the sheep, you’re caring for them, whether it’s through pastoral counseling, whether it’s through hospital visitation, through funerals, weddings ... so there is a sense in which what the largest difference is ... no doubt, is the scope where in my previous contexts I was serving I would say 75% of the congregants lived in the same community where the church was and that I lived. So, 25% if you drew a 20 mile radius, you would have the other 25% living in that region. Where Dawson is going to be a church located in Homewood, Alabama that probably flips that. It probably is 25-30% of our congregants live in Homewood where I live with my wife and our children go to school and she’s a teacher. And 65-70% would live in, again draw a 30-40 mile radius ... and so the scope of ministry is one that you have to have realistic expectations. It’s probably been one of the harder learning experiences that I have had whereas I could in previous settings go into a Wal-Mart or a Publix and see a host of church members that I could easily in that moment tell you the name, spouses, brother/sister, some people that didn’t even attend the church but you have just a real sense over time of connected tissues and relationships. I have been, and it’s been a privilege to be at Dawson for six years now, and there’s still people for a variety of reasons and sometimes I have to ... I feel that I need to apologize. Someone will come up to me and say, “Hey, I’m a new member at Dawson.” And my gut instinct is to say, “I am so sorry. What have I done to not intersect with you prior to this?” But the scope of it is such to where it will probably be very unrealistic to know that I am going to have a deep, intimate personal relationship with the thousands of people who God has brought to be members of that church. Now, the joy of this is I don’t, I’m not called to do this alone. So, I have the privilege of serving with many God called men and women who minister alongside of me at Dawson. So, there’s a sense in which there’s the scope of congregants or more but then the scope of ministers and pastors I have the privilege to share with. So, there is a sense where that’s a little bit harder. I think sometimes it’s easier I’ve found to say I’m going to do it all. I cannot do that at Dawson. And nor am I called to do that. And so that’s been a learning curve for me. >>Doug Sweeney: You and I have a number of things in common. One thing we have in common is that we both have taken over the leadership of high profile institutions in our region. From beloved people. I became the Dean after Timothy George, our founding dean, had served for many years and is still a beloved member of our faculty. You took the senior pastorate of Dawson after nearly a quarter of a century of Gary Fenton’s ministry. Gary Fenton is beloved in the Beeson community, of course, to this day. He works with us. I think oftentimes when he is not preaching somewhere else he’s attending Dawson. What was that experience like for you? How difficult was it for you to try to kind of step in and succeed Dr. Fenton there? >>Dr. Eldridge: Yeah, such a good question. For me, Dr. Sweeney, the honest answer to this was Dr. Fenton showed me a path to ministerial succession that has to be the model. Because of who he is and the way that he pastored Dawson for 25 years but then the way that he graciously gave me room to get to know the congregation and he has been without any doubt one of the foremost encouragers of my ministry at Dawson. And so his intentionality, I mean, he did a couple of things that gave me room ... one of the things that he did is that when we came to Dawson he and Alta Faye who are still very active members at our church said, “We’re going to spend a few years outside of Dawson.” So, that gave me the ability to really just jump into the congregation and to just spread my arms out a little bit. And he was very intentional about that. And then he after time of discernment came back into the congregation. But you’re right to say that there’s very few Sundays that he is not out. He’s just so beloved not only in our congregation but he’s beloved in the metro Birmingham church world. And he’s oftentimes preaching. He’s oftentimes teaching in a variety of settings. But I have a drawer in my office that is filled with encouraging cards. And so if you were to go ransacking through that drawer you would find through the six years that the person who has written me more than anyone else with tremendous specificity is Dr. Gary Fenton. So, to answer your question, what was it like? He has just paved the way that I hope that the Lord would offer me the ability decades from now to be able to pass the baton to someone. And I have learned a PhD level sort of seminar of what it means to give space and to offer encouragement and to be a resource and a friend. So, it’s a joy. >>Doug Sweeney: What a blessing. You’ve got me thinking we need to get Dr. Fenton to do some kind of seminar or a podcast interview or book, just about this sort of ministry – passing the baton to somebody else. >>Dr. Eldridge: Oftentimes I’ll be with pastors who are in this period of time where they’re considering that kind of pastoral transition. And the one thing I’ll always say is, “Well, I know who you need to talk to.” And Gary Fenton. And he’s always really gracious to have those kinds of conversations. Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: All right, so what is the Lord doing these days at Dawson? What’s going on? What’s keeping you busy? Anything keeping you up at night? >>Dr. Eldridge: Well, one of the joys of serving in the church at Dawson is God is constantly doing things that I’m not fully aware of. And so one of the joys of serving at a place like Dawson is to see the way God is using men and women who love the Lord, who are called to a variety of professions and places, and they do it with tremendous faithfulness and tremendous intentionality. And so some of the things that we’re seeing God do in the life of our church is just a real movement of college, singles, and young couples that are coming into our church largely because of the intentionality of lay leaders, the way that they are investing through small groups that we call life groups, and the way that God has just opened those doors I think are really stunning. And they’re really generational impacts that are occurring in the life of our church through an influx of the last few years. But also I can look out and see how God is doing work in the life of our church that hopefully will bear seed, will bear growth far beyond the seed that is being planted right now. And one of the intentional areas of strategic development that our church is doing at this point is a church planting movement that we are doing in the state of Alabama. For the next five years our goal is to plant five Spanish speaking congregations in the state of Alabama. And we’ve started a church planting residency and so God has been really good to see church work that is occurring. We’ve just now started a church plant in Huntsville. Again, a Spanish speaking congregation there. One in Alabaster. And we’re having conversations now in Albertville. And also Athens, Alabama. So, these are things that we’re really grateful for that God is opening these doors and to see the families that God is bringing. We have a new church planting pastor that’s coming into one of our homes and so really excited about what he is doing in that area. >>Doug Sweeney: That is exciting. Well, Dr. Eldridge, our time is coming to a close. We do always like to end these interviews by asking our guests what the Lord is teaching them these days. You’ve been a faithful pastor as we’ve learned for many, many years. You’ve been walking with the Lord for many years. Does somebody with your level of Christian maturity still get taught new things by the Lord? What is he doing in your life these days? >>Dr. Eldridge: Well, he’s consistently teaching me things. I think one of the elements that the Lord continues to remind me of and maybe this is not something that I’ve learned just recently but I continue to have to, to be reminded of is I think oftentimes in pastoral ministry we’re consistently thinking, “What is the next big thing?” What is the next monumental achievement or leadership strategy that needs to be before the table? And I’m just reminded I think Luke 13, Matthew 13, the parable of the seed, the parable of the leaven, that it’s oftentimes these small investments that grow exponentially over time and just the calling of faithfulness, the calling of showing up week after week, before the Lord, asking him to lead, the consistency. I think of Eugene Peterson’s book, going back to Kierkegaard, a long obedience in the same direction. And I think God has reminded me of that, that it isn’t what can a pastor do? What can a church do? What is a pastor called to do? Or a church called to do in this next year? But what does faithfulness look like in the next five years and ten years and fifteen years and twenty years? And those seeds that are sown that oftentimes are incremental and small in the moment. And sometimes I think we can feel are insignificant, but that’s the economy of the Kingdom. That’s the way that God expands and grows his work here on earth. I’m reminded of that. I’m encouraged by that, too. >>Doug Sweeney: I am, too. That’s a wonderful word. A wonderful way to conclude. You have me thinking the kind of thing the Lord has been showing you in recent years is not only important for those of us involved in pastoral ministry, seminary ministry, but I’m thinking of the lay people who invested in you as a young man that we began talking about in this interview. This could be a wonderful encouragement to lay people listening to this. You may be investing in the life of somebody like David Eldridge who is going to go on and serve very faithfully, lots of people down the road. >>Dr. Eldridge: Amen. >>Doug Sweeney: We often look for the big shiny new thing and sometimes the big shiny new thing is fantastic, but this long obedience is what the Lord calls all of us to and really does use over and over and over again. >>Dr. Eldridge: That’s right. Well, I saw it exemplified here at Beeson. I heard that taught. I saw it in the professors. I see it in you, Dean Sweeney. And I just thank the Lord for Beeson Divinity School. >>Doug Sweeney: Listeners, you have been hearing Dr. David Eldridge. He is the Senior Pastor of Dawson Memorial Baptist Church here in Homewood, Birmingham, Alabama. He is also a proud alumnus of Beeson Divinity School. And we’re deeply grateful to him for all the many ways he cares for our students and staff and he’s on our advisory board. He spends a lot of his time and energy helping out here at Beeson. David, we’re super grateful to you for that. Listeners, we’re grateful to you as well. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for praying for us. We’re praying for you and we say goodbye for now. >>Rob Willis: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our engineer is Rob Willis. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes and Spotify.