The Christian Century

I loved Denny Spear, my first pastor, because he knew my name and greeted me weekly. What I didn’t know was that Brother Spear, as I called him, was a man of great conviction. He had resigned from his previous church one Sunday when his members voted not to admit black worshipers. Denny and his wife had four children at that time and nowhere to go until he came to us at Dunwoody Baptist, and he wouldn’t come to us until we adopted an open membership policy.