First Person with Wayne Shepherd

First Person: Dr. George Grant

The first guest on FIRST PERSON is Dr. George Grant, pastor of Parish Presbyterian Church in Franklin, TN. I travel from my home in Chicago to Franklin quite often and have always appreciated hearing George preach and teach. However, it’s hard to label him, because he does so many things. He is an accomplished author, pastor, educator, and historian. As such, he has one of the sharpest minds I’ve ever encountered. So, I wanted to know how that mind was developed and how the Lord first wo...

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 05 Oct 2010
Audio Format:: other

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I have seen people who have far greater intellects than mine and far greater gifts than mine spurred on just because somebody said, "God for it, man! You can do something with this!" That's Dr. George Grant and this is First Person. I'm Wayne Shepard, very glad you could join us for this conversation. It's been said that our lives are short stories that lead to a novel. First person is one short story a week, which tells God's story through people. As you listen, hopefully you'll be encouraged and perhaps even prompted to think about your own account of God's faithfulness. I've known George Grant through his books, but a few years back, a mutual friend introduced me personally to him. He's an author with more than five dozen books to his credit, but he's much more than that. A pastor, educator, historian, George has the ability to think deeply about the scriptures, and yet present Christ-ness truth to the whole of life in a compelling and winsome way. Dr. Grant is pastor of Parish Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee. He's also president of the Kings Metal Studies Center, founder of the Franklin Classical School and chancellor of New College, Franklin. His most recently published work is the American Patriots Handbook. I sat down with George to talk to him about his spiritual roots. The conversation took place in his church office in Franklin, surrounded by his beloved books. As we talk that day, I asked him when it was that he placed his faith in Jesus Christ. I was a teenager. I actually was raised in a non-Christian home. We did go to church usually for Easter, sometimes for Christmas. Other than that, I had no acquaintance with the scriptures. This was in Texas. I was born in Houston and raised in Dallas, and I had no acquaintance whatsoever with the faith. I do remember as a child seeing the film The Robe and being really smitten by it, I had deep, deep feelings that I didn't quite know what to do with. I now recognize those feelings as conviction, but at the time I didn't know what it was, I'd never heard the message before, but I was gripped immediately by the message of Jesus and the story of The Robe. But when I was in high school, an evangelist actually came to our high school and made a presentation in what we called then the All-School Assembly, and he was absolutely hilarious. It was just a really funny, engaging, wonderful guy, and he was talking about religion, which I wasn't particularly interested in at that time. But sitting a couple rows in front of me, there was a young lady that I was always one of those in this story. I had my eyes on, and I noticed that she was alternately laughing and crying in this presentation. And so he was going to do a number of meetings at our local high school stadium, outdoor stadium. And so I thought, you know, this is a good excuse to get her to go out with me. So I asked her to go with me, and she said, yes. So the very first time I had ever heard a sermon, the first time I had ever heard a gospel message with an invitation to accept Christ, I heard it, I believed it, and with fear and trembling, I stood up, walked down onto the field and accepted Christ. What next? I mean, what do you do with that? I mean, with no church background, where do you turn? Well, you know, they gave me some follow-up materials, including a little gospel of John, and I read through that gospel of John that night, and was just astonished by what I read. And I knew that it was true. So that was the spirit reaching out to you right then and there. Yeah, just an incredible confirmation of the Holy Spirit's work. So at the time, I was living with my coach. I was not living at home, and I had very limited budgets, and I decided that whatever it was that I had just done, I needed to find more about it. And so I went to a little Christian bookstore that I had seen any number of times on my way to swim practice. And I stopped in at this little Christian bookshop, and because of my limited finances, I immediately went to the sale table. And I was just going to buy just whatever stuff they were getting rid of for a really cheap price. And it just so happened that this was a little Pentecostal bookstore, and so what they had on the sales table were a lot of things that they really didn't do well with with their clientele, Charles Head and Spurgeon, you know, the great Puritan Richard Baxter. So the first three books that I bought as a branded Christian, I bought a Bible that day, my first Bible, and three books. Charles Head and Spurgeon's the soul winner. Richard Baxter's the Reformed Pastor, and then Jeremiah Law's commentary on the book of Judges. Not exactly the path most new believers take. Not at all. And so that was my beginning. I took those home and I just swallowed them whole, essentially. And it was really remarkable. In the days that followed, I was able to find a good Bible-teaching church, Believers Chapel in Dallas, Texas, which was a lot of Dallas theological seminary guys. S. Lewis Johnson was there at the time. There were Sam Storms was a young, young life interned there at that time. There were just some really remarkable Bible teachers. And so in those first few months, I just got a heavy dose of good, expositional Bible teaching and a great introduction to the Puritans, the covenanters, and the Plymouth Brethren. I just got a great heavy dose of that. And then I was off to college. Let me take you back to those books. Do you still have them? I do. I thought you might. I do. Are they in this room? I have all three of them. I think one of them is in this room. Okay. Now you mentioned your coach and your swimming coach. You were pretty accomplished as a swimmer, weren't you? You know, fortunately back in those days, I can say that. There wasn't as much competition as there is. No, okay. Here's the humble George Grant coming to know. Seriously. You know, I probably couldn't qualify with my times back then. I probably couldn't qualify for a city meet in current high school standards today. But back in those days, you know, I had some great opportunities and I had some great coaches, some really great coaches. One of them was the great Richard Quik, who went on after he coached high school swimming to become one of the most accomplished and decorated Olympic and collegiate coaches. He recently went home to be with the Lord, but he was one of my summer league coaches. And so I had some great, great coaching. But you did you have an opportunity to try out for the Olympics at one point? I did. I did. I had an opportunity. I went to the to the trials, but didn't make it. But today you're your runner. I know your passion for running. Is it the same as you felt swimming or maybe you still swim? I don't know. You know, I don't have much of a chance to swim. I love to swim whenever I can. I do love just the physical activity. The reason I started running though was I started to realize that as a pastor and as a as a writer, most of the people I knew were all believers. I didn't have good venues to meet unbelievers who didn't, you know, have the presupposition that I was, you know, pastor, grant or doctor grant. We can become isolated. Yeah, I needed a world where I was just that tall goofy guy. I needed a I needed a world where I was just George. And so I found out about these running groups. And here in in this area, the running group is the Nashville Striders. And I thought, what a great way for me to meet unbelievers on an even plane. I'm not, you know, pastor. I'm not educator. I'm not, you know, author of books. I'm just another runner. I think there's something we can all learn from that. I remember John Stott saying years ago, if our only friends are Christians, we have failed. Absolutely. You must help you deal with stress though. I mean, pastors don't have stress. I know that. But I tell you, it's a wonderful thing to get up very early in the morning. I was out very early this morning. And I was, I was out real early. And it was, it was just really incredibly delightful to be alone with the Lord. Take me back to college. Your journey with Christ really had started just prior to college. Yes. And so did you choose a Christian college? What kind of education were you pursuing? What were you hoping to get from education? Well, I got a, I really wanted to swim in college. And so I went where I thought I would have the best opportunity to swim, which was a Division 1 NCAA State School, the University of Houston. And so I went there to swim. But just the summer before college, there was a great event that Campus Crusade put on in the city of Dallas, Expo 72. And it was, it was there that I got the nine transferable concepts. And I started scripture memory for the first time. I got an NASB, one of those great big orange foam, you know, giant chocohorse NASB Bibles. And I, I began using the cross-reference system and studying the scriptures, having quiet times for the first time in the summer before college. So I went to college and I was on, on our swim team. I was the crazy Jesus free. Yeah, I was going to ask you, if I had known you, would you have tried to convert me at that? Oh, I was, I was, I was pretty obnoxious. I was, I was in at that time what I would call the cage stage, which means, which means that, you know, sometimes young believers can be so overzealous that they just bulldoze over everyone. My parents thought I'd gone absolutely insane. My brother and sister were embarrassed to be around me. You know, I'd gone from being cool to suddenly, because I was the oldest, to suddenly being the family embarrassment. And it was justly deserved. I was, I was pretty obnoxious. But the Lord was really gracious in those days. And I did have the opportunity to learn some great evangelism techniques and, and approaches and apologetics. And in that first year, I really grew tremendously, got involved in a campus group, a Christian group, where I was almost immediately thrust into leadership. Lord knows why. And, and started to be involved in things like cults ministry and all of that. There's apologetics, you brand new Josh McDowell in those days. The Berkeley World Liberation Front. I don't know if you remember that. But that was the beginning of the spirituals counterfeits project. Rooks Alexander and all of those guys. So that was all very stimulating for you. It was, it was. I remember in 1973, Guru Maharajee came to usher in the new millennium at the Houston Astrodome. And I was a part of an evangelism team that literally went to the Astrodome and met with all of the converts of the divine light mission. And we had materials prepared and we got training. And so that was really the beginning of ministry. And we'll continue this conversation with Dr. George Grant on First Person. If you missed any part of the last few minutes or would like to listen again, you can visit our audio archive at firstpersoninterview.com. Looking ahead to next week's show, my guest will be a man who grew up in Ireland and served as a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary at a very stressful time. One of my little statements, and I think it's applicable on my personal situation, but security is not the absence of danger. It's the presence of God. And I had to learn nothing can separate me from the love of Christ, not life, not death. You'll meet Philip DeCorsy next week here on First Person. Visit firstpersoninterview.com. I'm Wayne Shepard. Our guest today is Dr. George Grant. You can find out more about him at firstpersoninterview.com. During my visit to his church study, I asked George about his passion for both the local church parish and education, wondering which came first. Pastoral ministry. I really, education didn't, it didn't dawn on me the importance of education until Karen and I had our first child. And when, when I began to examine what educational options might be there for my infant son, I became frightened. I had begun to pursue what I hoped would be a career. I really thought that I was not supposed to be in pastoral ministry. I thought that I was supposed to get a Washington DC and be some kind of Christian lobbyist that I was supposed to work in public policy in some way. So I was in pursuit of that and I was educating myself by reading a lot of the founding fathers. I was reading not just the founding fathers, but what the founding fathers read. And then I read what those that the founding fathers read had read. And one of the things that I discovered was that that in the modern world of public policy, people didn't think like that anymore. They weren't grounded like that anymore. So you saw that connection right away? I did. And it frightened me. And I decided then and there that all of the things that I had never learned in school, I wanted my son to learn. All the things that I felt like I'd been deprived of, the incredible inheritance of my my own legacy as an American, as Christian, I felt like I'd been deprived of all of that. I wanted my son to have that. And so I I began to really wrestle with what what what is education? What's it for? How does discipleship fit into the equipping of schooling in a young child's life? That really is what sort of sent me off on a path. I'm not an educator. I'm not a historian. I'm not an academic. I just realized that I wanted a lot more substance for my kids. And so I was an enthusiast and a dabbler. I'm still an enthusiast and a dabbler. Well, God has certainly used you to draw a lot of us into that world so that we appreciate it much more and study much deeper and understand ultimately the scriptures must much better as a result of it. Well that that is my hope in my prayer. You know, there is there's an extraordinary kind of thing. I think that my primary gift is not the gift of teaching as much as it is the gift of encouragement. I think that that's probably my my one trick, you know, that I've got. I'm a one-trick pony as I often say. But there's great power and encouragement. And I have seen people who have far greater intellects than mine and far greater gifts than mine spurred on just because somebody said, "Go for it, man. You can do something with this." And so most of my ministry has just been telling other people, "Go for it, man." Let me take you back because you're coming of age in a sense in the area of public policy, paralleled the influence rising of Francis Shafer. Yes. What kind of influence did he have on you? Enormous. Enormous. I started reading Francis Shafer 37 years ago this month. I know that because I gave a talk this morning on Francis Shafer and I prepared for that talk and I kind of recollected all of my associations with with Shafer. I think it's time for the church to start paying attention to Shafer again, don't you think? Well, I tell you what, I am astonished by how much more relevant and to the point he is today than even, you know, when he was in his heyday in the 70s and 80s. It's really astonishing. So I started reading him 37 years ago. About three years later I heard him speak in a large meeting in Houston, Texas. Then I had the opportunity the next year to go hear him speak again in San Diego at the big inerrancy conference that was held there were all of my heroes were lined up. There was J.I. Packer. There was Ray Stedman and you know there was Moshe Rosen and I mean there's this whole slew of them and John Stott and I was just I felt like I was in heaven and I feel like that's what heaven is going to be like when I think about heaven. I think about that inerrancy conference in San Diego. You weren't right. But I had a chance to hear him there. I then later was able to visit Liberty on a number of occasions. I devoured everything that Shafer wrote. He is a little booklet to contents to realities in which he said that if Christians are going to accomplish what we've been called to accomplish we need to have the content of sound doctrine we need to have the content of honest answers to honest questions. But to do those two contents that that orthodoxy we needed to also have the reality of true spirituality and the reality of beautiful human relationships. That speaks today loudly. Well that that became the framework for almost everything that I attempted to do in the years after that and it remains a part of the framework. In fact when we planted this local congregation. Parrish Presbyterian Franklin, Tennessee you can say it. Yeah those those two contents and two realities were woven into our original distinctive statement. A couple of questions before our time runs out pastoral ministry. What drives you? You say you're not an educator you're not a historian but you are those things and more but it all comes together in pastoral ministry for you. Well it does. You know I go back to Richard Baxter in that first book that I read as as a new believer he said if we believe that the gospel is true and if we believe that men without Christ perish then how can we help but tell the world. And if we tell the world will we simply tell them or will we guide them into the everlasting way. Show them the way. Show them. And you know that book is is actually a very long exposition that this great Puritan Richard Baxter wrote in 1656. It is this this long exposition of a single verse of scripture. It's Paul's charge to the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20 where he says tend to yourselves and tend to the flock of God which the Holy Spirit has made you an overseer of by the inheritance that he has won by his own blood. Boy if you if you believe that verse how can you not desire to feed the flock of God. Finally we could and should talk about this for hours but what is the challenge facing the church right now. I oftentimes say that the greatest challenge that faces the church today is to simply be the church. To be salt and light. To be prophetic and courageous. To be a place of shelter but we're also to be a fortress and a defense against wickedness in the world. And often times we treat church as if it's really just a country club or a therapeutic session. And so for me the great challenge is is that the church would be the church. Now in God's redemptive plan the church is plan A and there is no plan B. That should cause us to be enormously sobered and yet at the same time enormously encouraged. If God's plan is to actually use these feeble funny gatherings of this peculiar flock for the redemption of the world what a glorious gospel this is. Dr. George Grant been a delight as always. Well thank you this is a this is a dream come true for for you to have a program like this. I'm so excited. Always the encourager. We've placed links to the life of ministry of Dr. George Grant on our website firstpersoninterview.com. First person is a weekly conversation but you can visit us online anytime or on Facebook or Twitter those links are found on our webpage firstpersoninterview.com and if you have a suggestion for a guest to join us please contact us online once again that's firstpersoninterview.com. Next week our guest will be Philip Decorsy a former police officer in Ireland who now wields a different weapon. With thanks to my friend and producer Joe Carlson I'm Wayne Sherry. Join us next time for First Person. you (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]