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Pamela Walker Blume is a native of Newport News, Virginia, and currently resides in Boone, North Carolina, where her husband, Allan, is pastor of Mount Vernon Baptist Church. A graphic designer by training and trade, Pam’s favorite job is being Jeremy’s mom. She has served as a trustee for the International Mission Board which she describes as “having a front-row seat to watch what God is doing in the world.” Pam and Allan have between them been on mission to Western Europe, West Africa, Central Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Korea, and South America.

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“Kind Father, humble our hearts and accept our thanks for the blessings we are about to receive. Continue thy blessings upon us for Christ’s sake. Amen.”

That simple prayer is very special to me. It is known in my family as “Granddaddy’s Blessing.” There was never a meal where he was present that he was not asked—as patriarch of our family—to say “grace.” And he always recited “his” blessing. Now, I am not usually fond of rote, scripted prayers. I believe that prayer should be a heartfelt conversation between you and God. But just as we sing pre-written hymns and praise songs and offer them joyfully to the Lord, so I believe that Granddaddy’s blessing was an offering of thanksgiving every time he prayed it. That blessing has a special place in the hearts of my family. We don’t hear it from Granddaddy now—he’s with the Lord he loved—but I can still hear him in my memory in that gentle, lilting Tidewater Virginia accent and remember the great man who prayed it and the legacy of faith that he left to me.

I mention Granddaddy because his influence in my life has caused me to have a deep appreciation for the spiritual heritage I have been given. With that gratitude comes the sobering realization that with his passing and now the passing of my parents, I bear the burden of seeing to it that my son and his progeny receive and propagate that same spiritual legacy.

It has been said that any movement or ideology is only one generation away from extinction. If we don’t “teach our children well,” where will the church in America be in another generation? And as goes the church, so go our families and our nation. Are we as Southern Baptists up to the task of passing the torch to another generation? And as we hand off that torch, will we demand that they maintain “our” status quo? Or will we rather stir up within them a passion to see this world won for Christ by any means the Spirit leads them to use? Is that not the heart of our Southern Baptist spiritual heritage?

Although I believe in the absolute necessity of the entire body of Christ working together to fulfill the Great Commission no matter what “label” we wear, I happen to be a Baptist both by heritage and personal conviction. It means much to me to be able to trace my family’s Baptist pedigree back to the days before the founding of this nation.

Rev. Andrew Baker, my fifth great-grandfather, was a chaplain in the American Revolution and was instrumental in planting Baptist churches in western North Carolina and Virginia. While my family predates the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845, my forebears were proud to adopt the name “Southern” Baptists very soon thereafter. I suppose it is because my roots run so deep that I am inclined to be eternally optimistic that this convention will stay the course so long as we keep a high view of Scripture and passionate hearts to obey the Great Commission.

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