REFLECTIONS ON THE ART OF "DRIVING A NAIL WITHOUT BUSTING THE PLANK" + RICHARD CAVNES NEESE + Managing Editor Faculty Dialogue "Mountain humor is essentially . . . light-hearted and kind, it never has a barb in it, never lacerates, never seeks to embarrass or humiliate. Some of it is not so funny as it is poignant. It illustrates a great warm-heartedness that characterizes mountain folk."1 Ben C. Fisher (1915-85) The visitor who stood in my doorway on the University of Arizona campus in 1975-and filled it imposingly with his 6-foot-three-inch stature and Ursa Major silhouette-offered greetings in a jovial, mellifluous North Carolina drawl. The 60-year-old Ben Coleman Fisher had come to negotiate with my 73-year-old mentor and colleague, Earl McGrath, about a joint venture between the Program in Liberal Studies and the Education Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Both men shared a passion for the role of the private sector-and particularly the church-related schools-in transmitting life-transforming faith and values that enrich the enterprise of higher education and the quality of life in America. There was genuine respect and rapport between them and McGrath agreed to invest a major portion of his Lilly Endowment grant to help fund a year-long study of Southern Baptist educational institutions. The proceedings 1 were inaugurated at a National Colloquium in the bicentennial year of the United States' Declaration of Independence held in Williamsburg, Virginia, which drew more than 800 delegates representing all facets of Southern Baptist leadership, and the completed report was presented at Mobile College the following year (1977). Looking back, four years later, Fisher described the gathering as "a high-water mark for Southern Baptist colleges and schools,"2 and the capstone of his tenure as executive director-secretary of the Education Commission of the SBC-the highest leadership position in Southern Baptist higher education. I was reminded a few years ago of the impact of the study on individual campuses while conversing by phone with the vice president for student development at a Presbyterian-related college on the western fringe of the Great Smoky Mountains-not far from Webster, North Carolina, birthplace of Ben Fisher. She had been a student in the mid-'70s at Louisiana College and recalled the buzz on campus and her personal excitement at being selected-randomly in the generously sized samplings-to gather with classmates, faculty, administrators and trustees to respond to questions on the written instruments that informed the study. Having lived as a youngster in the hamlet-or so it was in 1950 before Atlanta's concrete beltway intruded on its eastern outskirts-of Ben Hill, Georgia, and imbibed the fiercely independent culture of the Southern Baptist church 2 of that community, I marveled at Fisher's skill in persuading 49 of a possible universe of 63 schools to join the study. Included were large coed liberal arts schools like Baylor and Wake Forest and small junior colleges and women's schools hidden in Appalachian hollows. Fisher, a national and global ambassador for higher education, at ease with a variety of Protestant and Roman Catholics fellowships, preached a practical ecumenism grounded in the conviction that "our unity must remain in diversity." Ben was a superb mediator and peacemaker with a special gift, in the words of his wife, Sally, for "drawing people together in the name of the Lord"; an accomplished negotiator who knew "how to drive a nail without busting the plank." What seemed an amazing feat of intradenominational cooperation in 1976, appears, from the vantage point of the subsequent conflicts of the '80s and '90s, to border on the miraculous. The cluster of articles that opens this issue of Faculty Dialogue represents the major presentations of the Teaching Values Project of the Christian College Consortium, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts of Philadelphia, and jointly developed by the faculty of Whitworth and Asbury Colleges. The Teaching Values Project focused on the practical aspects of teaching values-"the pedagogical mechanics" of classroom practice. The articles revisit several of the convictions of Fisher and McGrath that underlie the earlier Southern Baptist study: academic excellence, church-relatedness and Christian values are not 3 incompatible, and, in Fisher's words, "[church-related higher education can find] new ties that bind us together in the lordship of Christ, in the authority of the scriptures, and in our belief in life eternal . . . without falling into the error of indoctrination."3 The last article in the series, co-authored by Steve Stratton and James Owens, explores relationships outside the classroom-mentors and mentoring-that are particularly germane and revealing of a wellspring where Ben Fisher found strength and courage to overcome divisiveness, controversy, and self-interest among Christian educators. Drawing on his own experiences and those of a rich bevy of relatives and friends who peopled the mountains of western North Carolina, he crafted the humorous and poignant happenings of everyday life into his trademark stories that amused, disarmed, healed and instructed several generations of participants in sometimes heated and distemperate gatherings. To remember the visitor in the Tucson doorway almost two decades ago is to remember one of his stories that brings the issue of teaching values into focus. My cousin, Dan Moore, for many years was a circuit court judge in western North Carolina. He later became governor of the state and then served on the North Carolina Supreme Court. He was holding civil court once in Waynesville, and not far from that city, in a small mountain community, was a Baptist church whose members had added on some Sunday School rooms. The contractor had said that when they got down to the last thousand dollars, he'd donate that. The contractor was killed in an accident, but the congregation felt that they didn't owe the money and had refused to pay it. However, the 4 estate sued the church; consequently the case had to be tried. It came to court, and Dan Moore told me, "I sat on the bench, and it seemed a very clear-cut case; it didn't take long for it to go to the jury. I instructed the jury," he said, "and it didn't seem to me that there was much doubt that the jury was going to have to find in favor of the plaintiff, and the little church was going to have to pay that money." He said the jury was gone, and gone, and gone. An hour passed, and they were still gone, and he said, "I just couldn't understand it. I was afraid we were going to have a hung jury, and I was about to send the bailiff to find out what was going on." Finally, they filed back in, and the foreman of the jury stood up and said, "Judge-." Judge Moore said, "Wait a minute. Have you reached a verdict?" "Yes, we have, but I wonder if I could make a statement?" The judge said, "Certainly. Go ahead." "Well," he said, "Judge, it didn't take us ten minutes to decide the case. It was very clear-cut. We found for the plaintiff, and the little church is going to have to pay this thousand dollars. But the reason we've been out so long is that we've been making that money up, and we're still short about two hundred dollars. I wonder if we could take an offering here in the courtroom?" Dan said, "They passed a hat to me first, and we passed hats around through the courtroom, and we oversubscribed that thousand dollars."4 The "merciful justice" of the Waynesville jurors exposes the truth and consequences of teaching Christian values-at its heart the enterprise is incarnational and wrapped in narrative. As another consummate storyteller, Frederick Buechner, reminds us, the biblical faith and the ancient creeds that reflect upon it all witness to a series of largely flesh and blood events that happened, are happening, will happen, in time and space. For better or worse, it is a story. It is well to remember because it keeps our eyes on the central fact that the Christian faith always has to do with flesh and blood, time and 5 space, more specifically with your flesh and blood and mine, with the time and space that day by day we are all of us involved with, stub our toes on, flounder around in trying to look as if we have good sense. In other words, the Truth that Christianity claims to be true is ultimately to be found, if it's to be found at all, not in the Bible, or the Church, or Theology-the best they can do is point to the Truth-but in our own stories. If the God you believe in as an idea doesn't start showing up in what happens to you in your own life, you have as much cause for concern as if the God you don't believe in as an idea does start showing up. It is absolutely crucial, therefore, to keep in constant touch with what is going on in your own life's story and pay close attention to what is going on in the stories of other's lives. If God is present anywhere, it is in those stories that God is present. If God is not present in those stories, then you might as well give up the whole business.5 And so, as one among many who engage the fearful and fateful task of listening to our story and the stories of others in the light and lives of the ever-present Story, I offer thanks for two ambassadors of higher education whose lives touched on a cactus and palm tree festooned campus almost twenty years ago, and for a constellation of mentors and friends whose stories and lives have intertwined with mine and those of my colleagues, Joe Gilliam and Martin Bush, to enrich the work of the Institute for Christian Leadership-Earl McGrath, Edith Green, Mark Hatfield, Ralph Turnbull, Evelyn Egtvedt, Elton Trueblood, Paul Rees, Steve Nicholson, Ted Ward, Lowell Williamson, Carl Henry, Martin Marty, Robert Pamplin, Sr. May the undomesticated, extravagant, always surprising, blow-where-it-will Spirit who graciously animates our journey together, grant our petition that the Incarnate One 6 who inhabits our stories gift us with hearts and hands akin to those of mountain folk as we practice-and teach new generations-the art of "driving nails without busting the planks." Notes 1Ben C. Fisher, Mountain Preacher Stories: Laughter Among the Trumpets (Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1990), pp. xi, xii. My thanks to Dr. Jerry M. Wallace, vice president for academic affairs and provost of Campbell University, Buies Creek, North Carolina, for bringing this book-published posthumously by Sally Fisher-to my attention. 2Ben C. Fisher, ed., New Pathways: A Dialogue in Christian Higher Education (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1980), p. 6. 3Robert Rue Parsonage, ed., Church Related Higher Education: Perceptions and Perspectives (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1978), p. 103. 4Mountain Preacher Stories, pp. 36-7. 5Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark: An ABC Theologized (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), pp. 103-4. 7