On Saturday, January 8, 2000, Village Baptist Church in Bowie, Maryland was destroyed by fire. I should say the building was destroyed by fire; the church was not destroyed. Investigators concluded that the fire had started from a short in the wiring in my church office. The books in my pastoral library provided plenty of fuel for the fire.

After word got out that a pastor has lost his entire theological library, people began contacting me, offering to send me books. One seminary classmate who was no longer in the ministry sent me boxes of books, including many textbooks from our seminary days. Another friend sent me a set of Bible commentaries. The library at my home church, Broadway Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas, sent me some books.

Then I received an offer from someone I did not know. He identified himself as Earl Martin, who I later learned was a retired field personnel member of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and was then a professor at Carson Newman University in Tennessee. Earl sent me a set of Bible dictionaries.

The following summer my wife Linda and I were attending the General Assembly of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. We saw that Earl Martin and his wife Jane were leading a breakout session which we gladly attended. After the session we went up and introduced ourselves to Earl and Jane. It was the beginning of a friendship that we cherished for over 20 years.

Earl and Jane Martin attended worship at our rebuilt church on a Sunday in 2007, and Earl was the guest preacher. In 2014 they visited us in our home, and we went downtown to Washington, D.C. together to tour the National Gallery of Art and have lunch with some mutual friends. After Earl and Jane moved to Fort Worth to be closer to family members, Linda and I had lunch with them on numerous occasions when we were in Fort Worth to visit my mother.

Sadly, we learned that Earl had been diagnosed with cancer last summer. We stayed in touch with Earl and Jane, and with their daughter Char, who sent us updates on Earl’s condition. When we learned that Earl had entered hospice care last spring, I sent them some photos from our times together, along with a letter expressing appreciation and gratitude for our friendship. Earl Martin peacefully passed at home surrounded by loved ones on August 23, 2024.

We knew Earl’s passing was coming, but we were still saddened when it happened. Earl and Jane had been married 76 years. They met in high school and were married in Washington, D.C. After graduating from Maryville College in Tennessee, Earl felt called to the ministry. He graduated from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas and then was the founding pastor of Temple Hills Baptist Church in suburban Maryland.

In 1957 Earl and Jane began their service as missionaries for the Southern Baptist Convention, helping to found Baptist mission work in Kenya and Tanzania. They helped establish a community center and church in Nairobi, Kenya and later they co-founded the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Arusha, Tanzania. Along the way Earl earned a Th.M. from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina, and a Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi in Kenya. In 1977 they transferred to Rwanda to serve among Baptist churches there.

In 1982 Earl joined the faculty of Southwestern Seminary in Texas to teach missiology and world religions. Five years later he joined the faculty of the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Rueschlikon, Switzerland, where they became Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel. In “retirement,” Earl taught at Carson Newman and then at the B.H. Carroll Theological Institute in Texas. Most recently Earl and Jane were members of Broadway Baptist Church, in Fort Worth, where Earl’s memorial service will be held on September 23.

So, Earl was a pastor, and a missionary, and a professor; but for me and Linda, Earl and Jane were our friends. I mention them in Chapter 2 of my book, Spelunking Scripture: Acts and the General Epistles of the New Testament.

Before we had ever met, Earl called me to offer to send some books after he heard that my professional library had been destroyed by fire. He didn’t know me, and I didn’t know him, but he wanted to help. That’s just the kind of person Earl Martin was.