Two Goodbyes

Sunday morning found me in Mason City, Iowa, preparing to preach to Faith Baptist Church. Before leaving our hotel I decided to check my email. There was a note from Larry Pettegrew informing me that Tom Zempel had collapsed that morning while running. Later in the day another email said that Tom went home to be with Jesus shortly after being taken to the hospital. Three days later, on Wednesday morning, I received another note, this one stating that Catherine Buck had been taken to glory during the small hours of the morning.

Catherine was the widow of Dr. C. Raymond Buck, former president of Baptist Mid-Missions and a colleague here at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Even before Raymond passed away in 2008, her mind was being ravaged by Alzheimer’s, and after his death her family carefully sheltered her. But I can remember the days when she was a bright and gracious woman, a model for seminary wives, and a helper suitable for a Christian statesman.

Catherine captivated Raymond. She was still a girl in college when he proposed to her, climbing up to the second-floor balcony of her dormitory room to pop the question. I don’t recall whether he went up the trellis or the drain pipe, but he wasn’t supposed to be there. He once remarked that she probably said yes just to get rid of him.

Raymond traveled quite a bit, and Catherine was always on his mind when he was away from home. I remember racing with him through the shops in Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, looking for a tea-towel calendar that she would like. Later, when Raymond couldn’t travel any more, my wife Debbie and I would look for the same towels when we went through Schiphol, hoping to please her. That stopped after the Alzheimer’s set in.

When Raymond and I were at the Central Seminary campus in Romania, he would ask me to type emails for him to Catherine. He didn’t know how to use the technology, but he would dictate the letters in Sango, which of course I didn’t understand. He never told me what he was saying, but I’m pretty sure that Catherine is the only woman anywhere besides my wife to whom I have ever typed a love letter.

Most of the world—even the fundamental Baptist world—will never know about Catherine Buck. The truth is that Raymond could not have done what he did without her. She supported his ministry in the pastorate, then in Africa, then in Ohio, then at Central Seminary. During his last few years she became his most important ministry. She was a gracious woman of God, and she deserves to be remembered.

So does Tom Zempel, and it is much more likely that he will be. He was as public as Catherine was private: a professor, a pastor, an administrator, and a fellow of the Biblical Counseling Coalition. Tom was a man who hardly ever slowed down. In fact, he and I used to joke that we would like to follow in the steps of Raymond Buck, who never let a retirement or two keep him from full-time ministry.

The first time I met Tom, I couldn’t believe that what I was seeing was real. I thought that nobody could be that genuinely friendly and that interested in me, particularly when I didn’t really have anything to offer in return. But that was Tom: genuinely, frankly, openly interested in every person he met.

Tom was one of three administrators who brought me to Central Seminary. The other two were Charles Hauser and Doug McLachlan. The combination of the three of them made Central Seminary a very unusual place. McLachlan was the president, Hauser was the academic dean, and Tom was the assistant to the president. I was never quite sure who I was supposed to report to, but it didn’t matter. If there was ever a division among them, I never knew about it.

All three had seen the ugly side of fundamentalism. In Tom’s case, that meant finding himself out of a job and having the power structures pitted against him. He never let himself become bitter against those who had sinned against him. Instead, that experience gave him a determination to model and to train a different kind of leadership. That determination was shared by McLachlan and Hauser, and it is part of what made Central Seminary a remarkable place.

Meanwhile, before coming to Central Seminary, Tom took a pastorate in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, and began work on a doctorate in biblical counseling. He had already been a youth pastor, and pastoral ministry was his blood. Even after he came to Central Seminary, Tom was always burdened for pastorless churches and for church planting opportunities. He was a key individual who helped to plant All Nations Baptist Church in Minneapolis.

Tom was a tireless promoter of biblical counseling. He had a passion to teach people how to help others. He often donated his time to help schools set up or maintain their biblical counseling departments.

He also gave himself unstintingly to his family. I doubt that I’ve ever met a couple who were better suited for each other than Tom and Jane. It was obvious to everybody who knew him that they adored each other. The two of them reared three children, all of whom grew to model a sincere love for the Lord. Jane, his children, and then his grandchildren were always the most important part of Tom’s life, next to Christ.

During the years that I was the president of Central Seminary, Tom Zempel was my right arm. He was a capable administrator. He was a sound counselor. He was a hard worker for whom no request was too challenging. He was a helper, an encourager, and a friend—and I really thought that he’d have made a better president than me.

The Lord brings a few people into each of our lives who are more than acquaintances or even comrades. They are conduits of God’s grace, instruments whom He uses to turn us into something we could never otherwise have been. Tom was definitely one of those people for me.

I am stunned and saddened by his sudden departure, just as I am saddened by the slow homegoing of Catherine Buck. But what must it have been for her to wake up from Alzheimer’s in the presence of Jesus? Or for Tom to step, almost without breaking stride, from the streets of North Carolina onto the pavement of heaven?

One thing I know. Neither the timing nor the manner of either death was accidental. God in His good Providence was at work, as He always is, shaping events and touching lives. Who are we to guess how God might have used Catherine Buck over the past eight years, Alzheimer’s notwithstanding? Who are we to know how a sudden homegoing like Tom’s might bring greater glory to Christ? What we can say is this: both Catherine and Tom lived their lives for the sake of Jesus. Both finished well. I yearn for grace to do the same.

This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary.

Stoop Down, My Thoughts
Isaac Watts (1674–1748)

Stoop down, my thoughts, that us’d to rise,
Converse a while with death;
Think how a gasping mortal lies,
And pants away his breath.

His quivering lip hangs feebly down,
His pulses faint and few,
Then, speechless, with a doleful groan
He bids the world adieu.

But, O the soul that never dies!
At once it leaves the clay!
Ye thoughts, pursue it where it flies,
And track its wondrous way.

Up to the courts where angels dwell,
It mounts triumphing there;
Or devils plunge it down to hell
In infinite despair.

And must my body faint and die?
And must this soul remove?
O for some guardian angel nigh,
To bear it safe above!

Jesus, to thy dear faithful hand
My naked soul I trust,
And my flesh waits for thy command
To drop into my dust.