Submitted by philip on
By Staff, SWBTS Communications
BATON ROUGE – A 1957 Southwestern Seminary graduate, Tommy French, began his ministry long before and even longer after he enrolled in classes on Seminary Hill. Each weekend during his college and seminary years, he drove 160 miles to pastor a church, and his ministry has expanded for more than half a century.
In 1959, French followed the Lord out of his native Texas and into Louisiana to shepherd a church plant from its beginning to its autonomy, serving there through his wife Mary’s death in 2008 and until his retirement in 2009, marking 50 years as the church’s pastor. He continued to serve as pastor emeritus with his second wife, Sue, at Jefferson Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, La., and has served as president of the Louisiana Baptist Convention and chairman of the board of trustees at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS). Today, he serves as a trustee at Louisiana College and has two daughters and six grandchildren who all live in Baton Rouge and attend the church he grew from a small sprout.
Yet, when he received a letter from Southwestern President Paige Patterson informing him that he had been selected as a recipient of the seminary’s Distinguished Alumnus award, he could not believe it. French wrote a thank you letter to Patterson, explaining that when he received the letter and looked back over the past award recipients, he wondered “how it could be that I might be counted among them.” That, however, has not been something seminary administrators had to wonder as they selected French as one of two distinguished alumni for 2012.
In addition to his faithful service in the local church, French also established the Mary French Pricilla Scholarship at Southwestern in honor of his late wife Mary, who, he says, made his ministry possible and effective. French has also set up a similar scholarship at NOBTS.
“That was a must,” French says. “They have to be honored. It just has to be done. Their task, I think a lot of times, is harder than the pastor’s task. We have to realize the church a lot of times will honor their pastor but not necessarily his wife. You have to teach the church to do that quite often.”
So, French sets the example, speaking nothing but praises for Mary and for Sue.
“They supported the work. They were faithful in what they did. They were genuine Christian women – godly women – supportive of anything God called me to do. I could not have done what I’ve done without a godly wife,” French says.
He says he could not have done it without his education either, though many he knew discouraged him from finishing his Bachelor of Divinity at SWBTS, which was converted into a Master of Divinity in 1969.
“They said, ‘You don’t need to finish your education.’ I said, ‘No, I have to finish my education,” French says, recalling that in one of his final courses, advanced Hebrew, his professor Leslie Carlson gave him advice he kept in his mind until this day.
“The last day, he said, ‘Boys, let me tell you something. You gotta love the deacons, warts and all.’ And he’s right, you gotta do that.”
French says that type of practical training was not foreign among his highly academic classes at Southwestern – training that he says became invaluable to him during his 50 years of pastoring Jefferson Baptist Church. For that reason, his encouragement to Southwestern’s current students includes an admonition to persevere and to complete the studies they begin at the seminary.
“Finish your education,” French says. “If God calls you to preach, He calls you to prepare. Strive to do everything you can not to be diverted from being prepared for what God calls you to do.”
French says his time at Southwestern gave him the tools he needed to become a faithful pastor who could rightly divide and exposit the Word and who would be both consistent and reliable before and to his congregation. He hopes his life will in some way encourage other young men and women to come to Southwestern, where the Lord can prepare them for His work.
All in all, French could describe his joy and elation at being selected as a Distinguished Alumnus of 2012 in no other way than simply, “I am very honored by it. Grace upon grace.”