Gambling in the Associational Missions Division

A Story in a North American Missions Agency Series

Gambling in th Associational Missions Division

[A periodic newsletter is circulated among former/retired staff persons of the Home Mission Board now North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. Some of us write stories of remembrance about the "good ol' days. This is my latest contribution that was circulated today. This incident happened in early 1984 -- as I recall.]

Gambling in the Associational Missions Division (Part of the former Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention)

By George Bullard

One Friday afternoon some of the staff of the Associational Missions Division were sitting around our conference room. We were conducting a final run through of the logistics and content for a multiple day training meeting we were leading the next week. The target group was associational staff and state convention people who related to them.

One agenda item was going through the list of registrants to discover ways we could customize our interaction with them to help them gain the most possible from the training.

We got to one name, and we all started laughing. This registrant always signed up for our training meetings, but never showed up. We knew him too well. This was his predictable pattern.

We decided to do an “office pool” based on what time he would call on Monday morning to say the ox was in the ditch and he would not be able to make it to the training. We took a coffee cup, and each put a quarter in it and passed it around the table along with a paper where we wrote down what time he would call.

The person closest to the time he called would win. We gave the money and paper to our lead administrative person. We let everyone in the division know that if they received his call, they were to note the time and inform the lead administrative person.

I won! It was less than $2. I had guessed 9:30 a.m. and he called at 9:35 a.m. I was closest.

I told the lead administrative person to put it in our hospitality fund we kept for social events we held with one another and our spouses.

This was about as wild and crazy the gambling got among our division staff.

The Rest of the Story

This story also had a tragic end. The person who always cancelled coming to our training, also told his administrative person back at his office that he would be at our training.

She was not to try to contact him as it would be difficult to reach him. (This was before cell telephones and texting.) He would call her twice each day to check in.

Later he got fired for what he was doing when everyone thought he was someplace else.

When this happened, our laughing about this person lost its sense of fun. We were as sad as everyone else. We felt sorrow and guilt.

May we all pray for one another that we might allow God to fully guide our steps and convict us when we stumble.