SBCOutpost

Mrs. Bobbye Rankin, wife of International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin, is truly a first lady. Dr. and Mrs. Rankin were appointed as Southern Baptist foreign missionaries to Southeast Asia in 1970, where they served in various capacities until 1993, when the Lord called them stateside to lead the International Mission Board. The Rankins have two children, both of whom have been appointed for overseas mission work, and currently reside in Richmond, VA.

Recently, the SBCOutpost team discovered an article about Mrs. Rankin that was written by her son, Russ, and we think it provides an incredibly intimate picture of his mother’s character and commitment to serve the Lord. We’re sure you’ll understand why we decided to reproduce Russ Rankin’s article about his mother when you read it.

She is a model homemaker, a faithful witness, a gentle servant, a godly complement to her husband, and an example to her children. Thank you, Russ, for capturing the remarkable influence your mother has had in your life in a these brief words. And thank you, Mrs. Rankin, for being the kind of woman after whom young ladies — missionaries, pastors’ wives, and laywomen — can pattern their ministries.

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RUSS RANKIN’S ARTICLE ABOUT HIS MOTHER: I was about 6 or 7 when the old beggar began coming to our house. To my young eyes, he looked older than Methuselah.

Wrinkles ran craters down his dark, sun scorched face and his sunken cheekbones accentuated a toothless mouth. I would hear him coming down the driveway, leaning heavily on a stick he used for a cane. His eyes, clouded with age, had practically failed him and he tapped his way to our door with his stick, laboriously feeling out the path of his slow trudge.

We were the only foreigners in that town in Indonesia where my family served as missionaries in the early 1970s. Perhaps he thought that by sitting on our doorstep he would receive a sympathetic handout.

He never spoke a word to my mother, who would come out to acknowledge him with a beaming smile and respectful greeting. It was not money that she brought him; it was a cool, wet washcloth that she used as she knelt before him to clean his hands and bare feet, blistered and dirty, covered with sores from exposure and lack of proper attention.

Each time as I watched, she would bring a cold glass of water for him to drink and then she would softly speak to him about how precious he was to the Father, a Redeemer who offered a provision of saving mercy and grace from this world of pain and loneliness.

Later, when our family lived in Bangkok, Thailand, she learned to speak Thai so she could minister to Thai students in Bangkok. It was not uncommon for our home to serve as a meeting place for young men and women who were drawn by my mother’s spirit of hospitality and ministry. Eventually, many of them came to know Christ.

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

Scripture says in that day the righteous will plead ignorance, claiming they never saw Christ in those situations. To that, the Lord says, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.”

Throughout her many years on the mission field, my mother continues to live her life being the hands and feet of Jesus. She used her gifts to teach her children at home, she has led women in countless English classes and introduced them to the Savior, and she ministers tirelessly alongside my dad as they worked together to support missionaries who plant churches among unreached people groups.

Today, my mother is known as a woman of the Word. Scores of missionaries around the world have been encouraged and inspired – as I have – by my mother’s example of committing vast portions of Scripture passages to memory, not as much as a faith-discipline, but as a way of aligning their lives to the heart of the Father.

D. August “Augie” Boto is a licensed attorney who serves as vice president for convention policy and general counsel for the SBC Executive Committee in Nashville, TN. In this, the first interview conducted by SBCOutpost on July 12, 2007, Augie gives a perspective on the Southern Baptist Convention, local church ministry, and the legacy of Baptist theology and history from the vantage of a layman who’s served in churches of all sizes in Southern Baptist life. Today, Augie and his wife, Cindy, live near Brentwood, TN, where Cindy continues to work as a stay-at-home mom to their daughter, Grace. The Boto’s middle child, Matt, attends Union University in Jackson, TN, while their oldest son, Lucas, works for a talent management firm in Los Angeles.

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Augie, thanks for your willingness to grant us this interview, and for offering your thoughts on the Southern Baptist Convention, both where we’ve been and where we’re going. We like to refer to people like you as the “worker bees” of the Southern Baptist Convention. You don’t get much attention because most of your work is hidden up in the denominational hive. Without you, however, our primary work of reaching the world for Christ would never get done. So let’s begin by getting to know something about your own personal sense of Southern Baptist identity.

1. What are your earliest memories of being a Southern Baptist. When did you claim the name Southern Baptist for yourself and recognize your own confessional identity as consistent with those beliefs and values commonly held by Southern Baptists?

As I think would be the case with many who were reared by Southern Baptist parents, my earliest memories of being in Southern Baptist life were formed at a time when I had little understanding (if any) of the Convention. I was saved in Riverside, California and baptized at Magnolia Avenue Baptist Church in its first sanctuary, having attended earlier when the church was first organized and meeting in a home.

I have many fond memories of participating in R.A.s, playing in the tunnels under California Baptist College across the street, and attending (it seemed) every service, fellowship, potluck supper, and “pounding” held at the church or the college. My folks were extremely active at both places. I remember my mother practicing her Sunday School lesson aloud at the kitchen table, and my dad volunteering for major projects, like being the lead carpenter when the new sanctuary was built. My grandfather served as the church’s pastor for a time, and also as the college’s president. I remember meals in his home after services during which a visiting preacher would recount how God was moving among His people. I imagine none of the adults had an inkling of how those table talks impacted me, the small (and probably unruly) boy at the end of the table.

Even so, I would have to say that my Southern Baptist identity was galvanized much later, in my college years. The era was one in which “challenge everything” was a mantra. Suffice it to say that I did, repeatedly concluding Southern Baptist beliefs to be in line with the clear meaning of scripture, and finding that the Southern Baptist people and their (our) processes to most closely and more frequently match scriptural and God-honoring models of practical and effective Christianity.

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