R. Keith Parks was the Knute Rockne of Baptist missions.
If you ever heard Parks preach during a missions service, you left ready to run through a wall to see the world reached for Jesus, just at the famed Notre Dame football coach was known for charging up his players for a game.
Hearing about Parks’ death Aug. 27 at 97 brought back a flood of memories about his passion for missions.
I was 22 the first time I heard Parks preach. It was the commissioning service for the Foreign Mission Board’s Journeyman class of 1982-84 after six weeks of training, or as we called it, missions boot camp. Parks had taken the helm of the FMB just two years earlier.
Our group had just sung “Hear I Am, Lord,” a song so powerful itself that we were ready to blitz the world for Jesus.
“Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, if you lead me.”
And then Parks ascended to the pulpit. I honestly can’t remember a word he said that night. But I’ll never forget his passion and the empathy in his voice when he talked about reaching lost people for Jesus.
Sent out
Our group of 99 young and eager missionaries spread out around the world shortly after that service. I went to Botswana for two years.
Returning to the U.S. in 1984, our Journeyman group reassembled at Glorieta Baptist Conference Center for Foreign Missions Week. That’s the second time I heard Parks preach and again, it felt like I was in a locker room getting ready to tackle the world for Christ.
I would hear him preach many more times in the coming years when he came to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where I was a student and then later served as director of public relations.
His impact on my life and thousands of other Southern Baptists is immeasurable. Even today, reflecting on the many times I heard him preach about missions, I realize the power of his passion for missions and how it affected me.
We’ve lost one of the greatest proponents and prophets of global missions with Parks’ death, but his influence surpasses his life on earth.
Scott Collins is interim editor of the Baptist Standard. The view expressed are those of the writer and do not represent the Baptist Standard.
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