Beeson Podcast, Episode #
Dr. Matt Burford
Date

>>Announcer: 

Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of 91����. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. 


>>Doug Sweeney:

Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, I'm your host Doug Sweeney, and I'm joined today by two-time Beeson alumnus Matt Burford, who helps lead the apologetics group called Tactical Faith - which is organizing several big events here on campus in the weeks and months ahead and we want to tell you all about them and invite you to participate. Thank you, Dr. Burford, for being with us today!

>>Burford:
Yeah, thank you for having me. 

>>Sweeney:
So we've had you on the program before, but not every listener listens to every episode, not everybody's going to remember who you are. So let's just real quick introduce you to our podcast audience again. Tell us a little bit about your background, how you felt like the Lord was leading you into ministry and how you got to Beeson Divinity School.

>>Burford:
Oh, wow. How long do we have? Yeah, so my background, I'm from Alabama. I'm from a city called Anniston, which their motto is “near Birmingham, near Atlanta, near perfect.” So it's a small town. I grew up in a small part of that town called Blue Mountain or Saks, Alabama. Came to the Lord when I was six years old, there at a Baptist church. Still can remember, to this day, that event - talking to my dad about Jesus and crying at the age of six years old, because there was something real about the gospel that even a child could get. I like to tell people that God got me early and never let me go. 
And the next seminal event for me was when I was a junior in high school, and I picked up off my dad's bookshelf ... My dad was an avid reader, a big Christian, and I picked off the bookshelf, “God and the Dock and Other Essays” by C.S. Lewis. I read him in between a test that I was taking
at Saks when I was a junior. And I guess it was my, in terms of a Wesleyan experience, it was something else that happened within me when I read Lewis. I had never read anything quite like that before and it changed the way that I see at least in terms of the Christian faith in my life about the trajectory of where I was going. 
The minute after I finished one of those essays, I went to a friend of mine who's now a lawyer in Mobile and with a fire that was within me, he was a fellow Christian and I said you have to read this, this is something truly different. I have never been the same.
In college I got ordained. Well, I got called into the ministry in college. I knew I wanted to go to seminary. My wife went into medical school when she matched in 2003 here in Birmingham, I couldn't think of no better place to go than Beeson, and that's how I got here.

>>Sweeney:
Wonderful. All right. I know we've talked a little bit about Tactical Faith before on the podcast, but let's talk about it just a little bit, set the stage for the ministries going on now again today. How did Tactical Faith come to be and what is your mission?

>>Burford:
Absolutely. Part of that is just the recognition that I love my state. I'm like a hobbit. You know? This is where I grew up. This is where I hopefully will die. The state of Alabama is in my heart and the people here, especially the Christians here, are just a group that I want to help think about the faith. When I was at my time at Beeson because of what Beeson did for me; informing me and in my relationships with the faculty here I always loved apologetics I knew that was something that I wanted to incorporate into my life. But the ecumenical spirit of Beeson and just naturally the way Beeson teaches just made me think outside the box. I was always Southern Baptist, but being here really opened my eyes to be creative, if that makes sense.
So I left with an imagination of thinking, you know, my life could be more than just what I thought was a typical kind of profession of being a minister in a church. All those things are incredible. But because I had such a varied kind of background growing up next to Fort McClellan in Anniston and having different kinds of people in my life, my family has other kinds of connections that are varied. And with coming to Beeson, I think for me it was after I left I thought, God what do you have for me? 
In 2007 I got my MDiv, followed my wife out of medical training in Montgomery, my first job was at First Baptist Montgomery with Jay Wolf, and Jay Wolf released me. He was like, “Do whatever it is that you feel like God has for you here at this church.” And I told him, I want to build an apologetics ministry for my state, for the Christians here in Alabama. What can I do? And he poured his life and the church poured their life into me for three years. And it developed basically the starting of my nonprofit, which is Tactical Faith, which is totally devoted to the churches in our state to help grow people's faith, to get them ultimately to have the same experience I had when I was a junior in high school, that our faith is deep and it's strong. And it's a faith that is intellectual, but one that's also emotional. I mean, it is the true faith. And I want people to get excited the same way I got excited way back in 1992.

>>Sweeney:
Yeah. So, how did Tactical Faith move from being a ministry of First Baptist Montgomery to just being a broader ministry that benefits all kinds of people, all kinds of churches around the state? 

>>Burford:
That's a great question. And I would say I'd go back to the apologetic world that I was a part of. The nature of Christian apologetics in the country is mere. It's always been mere. It has its own little tastes, and its own little way of looking at the world in nuanced way, whether you're Reformed or you're Classical or you're Presuppositional, Evidentialist, or you might come out of a Presbyterian church or Baptist, but by and large, it's very ecumenical. And it's one of the draws for me in the apologetic world is that we can sit at the table with a Catholic or an Orthodox, which I've done, or any shade of Protestant, and we can agree on the mere fundamentals of the faith while having differences, important denominational differences, that we can have discussions with. 
So in a way, leaving Montgomery and coming back to Birmingham, I knew when I set up my 501c3 that this is going to have the Dr. Timothy George heart. And the heart of apologetics, which is that my ministry needs to be for the church and how else that always looks, but it'll always have a Southern Baptist, Alabama Baptist flavor because that's just who I am. But in that way, I think to answer your question, it was always meant to be for the church just because how I was formed here at Beeson. 

>>Sweeney:
Yeah, and when you talk about Dr. George and sort of his style, just for the three people out there who don't know yet what his style is, you mean it's both kind of a, you're a Southern Baptist, you don't apologize for being a Southern Baptist, but at the same time, you relish the opportunity to minister to all kinds of Christians. 

>>Burford:
Absolutely. I think ultimately this is where even him and Dr. Lyle Dorsett were so important to me. I remember coming and asking him, because you know, he kind of dabbles in that C.S. Lewis world when he came here when I was a student, and we would have constant conversations about the apologetic world. And I told him about this idea, about what is it like to be a Southern Baptist in Alabama, but want to have a mere Christian non-profit? How am I going to do that? And one of the things he told me was, you know, we were all in God's army. That's typical Dr. Dorsett kind of language.

>>Sweeney:
Yes, yes, yes.

>>Burford:
We all just are playing a different part in God's army. In the same way, what I would say about Dr. George is the fact that how his vision that God gave him for a place like Beeson was, like you said, he's not going to defend his identity. Some of that is waving that flag for being a Baptist historically and whatever that means. But there's a larger flag here, which is I'm a Christian and I can have those kind of common interests with other people who plant the bigger flag and I'm a Christ follower first.

>>Sweeney:
Yeah. Now that you've also mentioned Dr. Dorsett, this is a really important time maybe just to say a few more words about your connection to him and his ministry in your life. Some of our people know earlier this month he lost his wife Mary. He's been a big influence on lots of people at Beeson, but lots of people all around the country and around the world as well. But he's been retired for quite a while now, and some of the younger people who are getting to know Beeson today might not know much about him and his legacy. Who is he to you? And is there a relationship? I don't know the answer to this one. I know you have a heart for soldiers, Christian soldiers. He does too. Was he an influence on that part of your life or just what's your connection to Dr. Dorsett?

>>Burford:
Yeah, absolutely. And it's my honor to even talk about the background. Me and him have quietly met throughout the years. He’ll meet with me and a couple of faculty. And this is to go back about the importance of Beeson. Beeson's a place where you're not only coming to learn but you're creating relationships not only with your peers but with your professionals. So even after I graduated I mean I'm meeting Dr. Matthews or contacting Dr. Thielman on emails or talking to Dr. Gignilliat. Dr. Dorsett was one of those people that we would meet at Vestavia at the Panera Bread for lunch – quietly. And we did that over the years to the point where, you know, I'm not going over his house and having dinner with him, but we were intentional about each other's lives in our ministry. 
And he did a class on evangelism when I was, I think in 2006 or 2007, where he would end the class when he would clap his hands. I don't want to do that with the microphone here, but he would clap his hands and he would point at us, he would say, lead us to the throne. Almost as if he was somewhere between an evangelist professor and a coach. Right? And it was one of those classes where you wanted to leave the class and lead somebody to the Lord, like right there. And not to say that I'm a crazy Dorsett follower, but he had this thing for Airedales, the dog Airedale breed. I even got an Airedale. 

>>Sweeney:
Is that right? Under his influence?

>>Burford:
Yeah, about seven years ago we were looking for a dog and I said, you know what? I used to be called Airedale by Dr. Dorset. I'm going to email him and say, “I'm going to get me an Airedale.” And we've had an Airedale named Duke for eight years. And that's even another thing about our relationship. I'd send him pictures of my Airedale and he would just get so super excited about it.

>>Sweeney:
That's wonderful. All right, well we better get down to the stated business of the day, which is to let our audience know about some of the ministries that Tactical Faith has going on in Birmingham and especially on Samford's campus this coming year. Tell us what's in store, who can come, what do we need to know?

>>Burford:
Yeah, so we've been partnering with Beeson and Samford now for more than a decade. As I was writing down thinking who have we brought and what kind of relationship we've had. We've brought people like Dr. Gary Habermas, Dan Wallace, Eleanor Stump, Craig Keener and many others that kind of showcase this is what we're doing in a nonprofit. And Beeson is now our home base. So I teach as an adjunct over at Core Texts. This is where my heart is. Not only are we for the state of Alabama, but this is our home. Samford's our home.
We started in 2014 thinking about, we need to have more intentional dialogue with, probably with Catholics and Orthodox, because for some reason I'm bringing both. We brought Paul Kingsnorth who's a new convert in some ways but he's speaking in a wide range and not only in the Christian world but also in the snon-Christian world. So, we developed this thing called The In Spirit Diologues - working with the Greek Orthodox Church downtown and said, “What would it be like if we entered a relationship with you? You bring somebody in your world, we'll bring somebody in our world, and we'll just have dialogue.” And at the time, I'd already brought Rod Dreher, who had been on this podcast a couple of times, and they knew that I had done that and I've developed this really cool relationship with the Orthodox Church. And we brought him in 2014 and we thought, well, let's do this yearly, where we think of somebody and bring them. 
And this year in the fall, we're bringing Dr. Martin Shaw from the UK and the Protestant in the Protestant chair, I guess you would say, is a guy named Justin Briarley, who has had a radio station and a Christian presence in London for many, many years. And they're going to come on campus and talk about the sudden rebirth of interest of Christianity in Europe, to kind of give a positive sense to our students and to the community at large that God's working. In spite of all the negative news that we get, we tend to forget that God's doing something incredible. And He's always on the prowl.

>>Sweeney:
Dr. Alistair McGrath was just here keynoting at our preaching conference, and he was talking about using apologetics and preaching. But along the way, he was talking about the demise of the new atheism that everybody thought was real scary about 20 years ago, and the flourishing of Christianity in the demise of the new atheism in the UK and beyond. 

>>Burford:
Absolutely and even when I teach in the Core Texts program here at Samford where I'm trying to introduce these students to the Western world, one of the things that I'm constantly telling them from the beginning of my class is that everybody has fundamental questions about their life and the story you tell yourself about yourself matters. I tell my students that. So in other words, God has created us to be curious about his world and have questions about the world, but then we have to have legitimate answers with those questions. And then we come together in community to answer other questions like, what does it mean to be human? What's my relationship to nature? What's my relationship to God? 
And in doing so, what the students start realizing is that God has created us as meaning makers, that he's given us not only to be his ambassador, but to work the world in his stead. We can have his image. But to be a good worker, you have to know what your purpose is and what your meaning is, and you have to know answers to questions like, who am I? So what am I supposed to be here for? And in doing so, you have to answer intellectual questions that are hard and often difficult. 
And the new atheist you had 20 years ago, I was in part of the apologetic world, and they are offering a worldview, answers to those questions, but as the great Ronald Nash would say, “your worldviews, our worldviews are in conflict.” And one of the things that we have to do in competing and talking about our worldviews is seeing whether or not our worldviews can answer fundamental questions both consistently and comprehensively.
So, in other words, how you answer the question of where we came from is going to fundamentally answer questions about where do we go after we die? How you answer those two questions are going to answer like, what's my meaning in this life? Because if you come from nowhere and you go from nowhere, what is the civilization that you're going to create? Right? 
So in answering those, what I would say is my ultimate goal as a Christ follower is to say, listen, I love Christ. I have a relationship, personal relationship with Him, but also the truth of God, it is the only thing that we have going on. And here's my presuppositional slip showing, right? So there's no other worldview that's going to be able to compete with ours. And there's no other truth that's going to lead to flourishing like the Christian worldview. I guess that's ultimately what gets me excited about talking about faith. That's the evangelist part of me. Why wouldn't you want to go out there and talk about not only the truth, but the person that you love?

>>Sweeney:
Yeah. All right. So before we forget to tell the listeners how to participate in your event on Christianity in Europe. Is everybody invited?

>>Burford:
Absolutely.

>>Sweeney:
If they want to come, what do they need to know about the date and how to show up? 

>>Burford:
The easiest thing is to go on www.tacticalfaith.com if you want to look these things up. Samford will be marketing those too. These two will come the first Sunday in November at Reed Chapel. We're going to open doors at 3:30 and it will go till 6:30. It's totally free. They can register if they want to online just to give numbers, but this is going to be open to the community. 

>>Sweeney: 
Wonderful. I thought I knew everything about you until about a month ago when our marketing guy, Neil Embry, wrote a story about you that Samford put in its Samford magazine about you playing Taps at the funerals of fallen soldiers. I thought that was so cool and it was so interesting to me. It opened up a whole kind of ministry to me that I'd never really thought about before.
Can we just tack on a few minutes about that ministry and tell our listeners about it? What is it? How long have you been doing it? And how does the Lord use it in your life as a form of ministry to other people?

>>Burford:
Yeah, more than happy to. I will go back to my love for Beeson. I really think what Beeson can bring in terms of creating and cultivating the next generation of leaders for the church is an imagination to see that your whole life is a ministry for the Lord. 
So the opportunities that you give professionally might look like everybody else's. It might be a church or a nonprofit, but I think Beeson allowed me the opportunity to see the world in a creative way. That wherever I go, there might be an opportunity for me to serve him in ways I never thought I would. And coming out of college, I played in the University of Alabama Million Dollar Band. I played the trumpet in high school. 
We left college and I got married to my wife. She was in medical training and I was looking for a place to serve. My mom and dad instilled in me a real desire to find a way to serve the community and I think that's a big Christian ideal too, right? What are ways by which we can connect to others as we connect to God? And I found a program online, a group online called Buglers Across America, and it really captivated me. And it's a volunteer-only organization where you basically - they want to solve a problem. And the problem that's solved is all vets that pass away, if they're just honorably discharged or they were full-time in the Army or Navy or one of the branches, they all deserve federally an honor guard at their funeral. So, most people think folding a flag, shooting a bunch of guns, and part of that is the closing, which is Taps. Now that that's a federal, basically a federal law, everybody deserves it that has met those qualifications. 
Now, the problem is there's not a lot of people to cover that. So the National Guard in the state of Alabama tries to cover that and they do a great job of doing it. There's just not a lot of people to cover every aspect of that honor guard. So what they have done, because it's kind of hard for them to connect with people who can play the trumpet, is they've allowed part of the law to say people outside the military can come and fill that role.

>>Sweeney:
It used to be that only military people could do it.

>>Burford:
Yeah, absolutely. But then they opened it up to everybody, maybe 25 years ago. And if they don't have a person to fill, what they do is they put this little device in the trumpet bill and they act as if they're playing it. So I call it fake Taps, but that's probably too harsh. You can't replace a real person playing Taps. So the goal of Bugles Across America is to kind of bridge that gap and try to find volunteers that'll come and do it. 
Well, it fit exactly what I wanted to do. And I've been quietly doing it for about 25 years, probably up to 500 funerals I've done. So, I never thought it would be the thing that I would be known for, but it's probably one of those things I'm the most proud of. And I think I'll have maybe three things in my coffin. I will probably have my wedding ring, my Bible, and my trumpet. You know, because those are the three things that I think looking back that I'm most proud of God allowing me to do.

>>Sweeney:
Yeah. You told me a little while ago that you've had some surprising opportunities for Christian ministry to the families of the deceased that have come along with these playing Taps opportunities and that was surprising to me too. How does that go? Just as families are talking after the service and they're thanking you for playing, you know, you have an opportunity to reach out and provide some pastoral care for them beyond just the playing of the bugle?

>>Burford:
Yeah, because I think there's so much to be said about this, especially in the state of Alabama. One of those that I would think in my Protestant tradition here in the state, especially within the Baptist world that I have lived in and grew up in, in a lot of ways, we probably as Dr. Ian McGilchrist would say, we have left hemisphere in our worship, where it's all become about, it's analytical, it's things to be thought about. The other part of the hemisphere, which is relational, it's creating a space and a place for us to just live in and enjoy and have an emotional place in, which the higher church traditions do such a good job in. Those have connections to this experience that I've had with playing Taps. 
Because when you fold the flag, and when you're really intentional, and you're honoring somebody, and you're all on the same page, and you don't have to be there, and everybody's prepped towards the same aim and the same goal, so they're folding the flag, everybody looks like they're in uniforms, and then they'll do the Honor Guard 21 gun salute, everybody's all tensed up, and then I get to go in and I play this 24 note, solemn, really kind of an easy thing to play, but just like a really kind of complex, meaning-filled worship service, now you're bringing both hemispheres to play, right?
And then there's usually not a dry eye after I play, even if I don't play it well, which has happened before, right? So God's living in that somewhere, and we have a tendency in the state that I live in of trying to figure these things out analytically, right? And there's nothing wrong with the left hemisphere here, but it becomes almost like a worship-filled experience. And not only that, only in America will we take a bugle call, which basically every army has across the world. And we took a bugle call that was meant to, during the Civil War, to call the soldiers to rest. You have a bugle call to eat, you have a bugle call to wake up. Now they're like, we need a bugle call to tell them to go to sleep. But only in America will we tack on the top of that a bugle call now where we say, you know what, we're going to play this at their final rest. And in fact, you can play revelry at a funeral too, which a lot of people don't understand. And it might sound funny, revelry is the bugle call to wake everybody up. But there's a long tradition in our country of playing revelry at a funeral to remind the people that they will meet Jesus in the air. And only in America will we do such a thing. 
And so yeah, to answer your question, it's an opportunity for me to go be a part of that process. And then when they learn I'm an ordained minister, then they're more opened up to say, “Well, why are you doing this?” Well, I'm doing it because I think it's a special event that brings closure and meaning to your life. And it's my honor to be here. “Here, here's $100.” I'm not going to take your money. This is my honor to do that. And then before you know it, you've quietly created a trust relationship there that's like no other that I've been a part of. 
And all my friends that came from Beeson and beyond that are all pastors, they all had these opportunities to do that. But I get to do an opportunity where it's totally non-transactional. I'm there because I want to be there. I'm there because I think this is important. And I'm there to offer a closure that you might not ever get just by paying 24 easy notes on a trumpet.

>>Sweeney:
That's wonderful, Matt. Thanks for all you're doing in the service.

>>Burford:
Yeah, absolutely.

>>Sweeney:
Some of our podcast listeners are pretty avid prayer warriors, and they wanna be praying for you. How can our people be praying for Matt Burford, Tactical Faith, and your ministries?

>>Burford:
Yeah, I was thinking about that. You know, we've been around for about 13 years and we've always had ... we're volunteer by the way. Tactical Faith has never taken any money for a salary. We have an executive director that has, but he doesn't anymore. He teaches philosophy here at Samford. 
Pray for the nonprofit as we move forward, because we always have these opportunities to grow and expand our reach, but we don't want to lose our grassroots kind of nature. We never want to come in competition with other churches. We're here as a 501c3 parachurch that actually helps the church. And in doing so, I never want to be in competition with a church. 
And pray that as we move forward that we know how to navigate the world in a way where we don't bring chaos and tension, we bring unity and love. And that's hard in the apologetic world, right? Because it's so left hemisphere.
And I guess personally, even though I've had fun, that God has allowed me so many different places to do things and be so imaginative in my ministry, I'm always kind of intentional of knowing what's my next thing. What do you want me for? I mean, I've had a crazy CV and resume, but in doing so ... I hope this is not taken the wrong way ... I feel like I'm on the outside like a prophet. I'm doing things that are creative and crazy, but at the same time, I'm not established. In doing so, I'm proud of what I've done. But man, I am looking for a home. And I think now turning 50, I want the next generation to start. I want to start pouring into the next generation. And that's one of the reasons why I'm teaching at Samford. Because I think now my job is to help pour into the newer generation.

>>Sweeney:
All right, listeners, you have been listening to two-time Beeson alumnus, Dr. Matt Burford, head of Tactical Faith. Lots of exciting events. Go to www.tacticalfaith.com to find out the dates. Everybody's invited to this event coming up here at Samford. On which date? Tell them again.

>>Burford:
It's the first Sunday in November. 

>>Sweeney:
First Sunday in November. We hope to see you there. We love you. Thanks for listening. We say goodbye for now.

>>Mark Gignilliat:

You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of 91����. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our Producer is Neal Embry. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify.