Christmas sparks old friends’ memories of Rogers

Dec 13, 2005
CAROLYN NICHOLS
Newswriter

TITUSVILLE (FBW)-Years ago three central Florida pastors left the demands of their churches to go fishing together. At a lake between Mims and Sanford, they enjoyed fishing and talking so much that they lost track of time. They headed home after dark pulling a boat with no lights.

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Not long into their journey home, they were stopped by a local policeman. The three men, all gifted orators, talked their way out of ticket. So Joe Boatwright, Peter Lord and Adrian Rogers found their way home without a hefty fine.

“It all worked out fine in the long haul,” Peter Lord, former pastor of First Baptist Church, Titusville, told Florida Baptist Witness.

“That gracious man should have arrested us, but he didn’t,” admitted Boatwright, former pastor of Aloma Baptist Church, when reminded of the incident.

In a final act of loyal friendship, both retired Florida pastors spoke Nov. 17 at their friend’s funeral at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis. Adrian Rogers died Nov. 15 at 74 after a long battle with cancer. As Christmas approaches, memories of joyous times together re-emerge for old friends, Boatwright and Lord.

Boatwright’s friendship with Rogers began when both began studies at Stetson University in DeLand in 1951. Rogers, already settled in a local trailer park, helped Boatwright pull his trailer into the same park.

The two young men also shared a zealous commitment to biblical truth. As Boatwright tells it, a Stetson art professor lectured in one of the first chapel services of the year about the “innocence of man at birth.” Boatwright disagreed with the speaker’s premise and walked out of the chapel, only to find his new friend, Adrian Rogers, right behind him.

“Adrian asked me why I left, and I told him I didn’t want to be there when the thunder fell,” Boatwright said. “We laughed and left together.

“Adrian always was gifted with spiritual insight. I knew him when he was a ‘boy preacher’ and I heard him make statements then that I also heard him say on the radio from Memphis. He was a gigantic reservoir of biblical truth, a spiritual giant.”

The new Stetson graduates also attended New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary together where they met fellow student Peter Lord. The men and their families became life-long friends, often camping and vacationing together.

The Lord family and Rogers family co-owned a Winnebago and occasionally made trips together, notably to the Colorado Rockies before the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis. The two couples and three young children shared sleeping space in the vehicle. They also shared driving and child care responsibilities, and even today share fond memories of a June snowball fight atop Pike’s Peak.

The two families also vacationed in Lord’s home country, Jamaica, where they stayed together in a relative’s condo.

When Lord came in view of a call to First Baptist, Titusville, Rogers met him at the church to encourage him. The two friends left the pulpit committee long enough to go into the deserted church sanctuary to pray about Lord’s pending decision of whether God was calling him to Titusville from Haverhill Baptist Church in West Palm Beach.

“We prayed together a long time in that quiet place to know God’s will,” Lord said.

The Boatwrights and Rogers, with the Rogers’ oldest son, Steven, traveled in the late 1960’s to the Holy Land. Among the many sites they visited, Mt. Calvary and the Garden Tomb were the most meaningful, Boatwright said.

“We were gripped by these places and by what happened there,” Boatwright said.

Boatwright also shared time with Rogers during the difficult struggles within the Southern Baptist Convention during the Conservative Resurgence.

Recalling a meeting with pastors during the very early days of the conservative effort, Boatwright said an open conversation drifted into personal attacks, according to Boatwright. Rogers abruptly interrupted the meeting to say “We will never violate the principles of Scripture to recover and preserve the integrity of Scripture.”

“Years later we were sitting at a hotel breakfast table after a particularly hard election during a convention, and Adrian was telling me how it hurt him that that the opposition had to lose. I think he really loved the guy who lost. When this man came into the restaurant, Adrian called him to our table and asked him to sit with us. There was no vengeance, just integrity,” remembered Boatwright.

Both Lord and Boatwright said Rogers knew how to balance the demands of leading a large church with spending time with his family.

“As Christ loved the church, that is how Adrian loved Joyce,” Boatwright said. “He was a man of the Word who always kept his word.”

Boatwright said of Rogers that he never met another man who could see “comprehensive truth” and relate Scripture to issues of the day like his long-time friend. Rogers’ growing fame as a preacher didn’t seem to affect him, Boatwright said. He always made an individual feel important. Although his counsel was sought out by the powerful and famous, “he was never really overly impressed with his own success.”

Rogers’ advice was sought by presidents Carter, Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, who called during Rogers’ final days to assure Rogers’ of his prayers for him and his family, said his friend.

During Rogers’ fight with cancer, his old pastor-friends kept in touch and kept him in their prayers. Joyce Rogers called their friends with updates on her husband’s health, especially during his last hospitalization.

“He was triumphant all the time,” Boatwright said, his voice breaking with tears. “Even after he found out he had cancer, he still had goals and dreams. But he always said, ‘Whatever God does is alright with me.’”

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