C. Raymond Buck: One Remarkable Man

Recently, the Lord called Raymond Buck home to glory. His passing came as no surprise. He had experienced a stroke some weeks ago, and his condition had deteriorated further with pneumonia. Clearly, this was the Lord’s time for Dr. Buck’s homegoing.

I first met Dr. Buck just ten years ago. I was a brand-new professor at Central Seminary, and Dr. Buck was a distinguished elder statesman. During his long and varied career, he had been a pastor, a missionary in Africa, an administrator for and ultimately president of Baptist Mid-Missions, and a seminary professor. I was expecting to meet a grave and somber ecclesiastic. Raymond Buck was nothing of the kind.

In our first conversation we discovered that we both had an interest in gunsmithing. From that point onward, we were friends. I was able to find parts for guns that he was tinkering with, and he managed to get me interested in collecting old cameras (another of his hobbies).

Dr. Buck loved to regale his friends with tales of Africa. He told about practical jokes that his African students would play on him. He talked about shooting his first elephant, and he showed me the bullet with which he killed it. He spun a tale about hunting a cape buffalo, then suddenly realizing that the buffalo was hunting him! He told about shooting a leopard one night in self-defense. I saw him stump a Romanian translator with a story about upsetting a Land Rover full of avocados—the interpreter had no idea what an avocado was.

Underneath all these tales, however, was a common theme. That theme was the tremendous need of the world for the message of Christ. Dr. Buck felt that need keenly. He never stopped encouraging people to look at the world’s mission fields.

The gospel was supremely important to Raymond Buck. He had grown up in an apostate denomination, and he actually pastored in that denomination for a while. He saw firsthand the devastating consequences that follow when ostensibly Christian people deny the gospel. He loved the gospel, he preached it, and he defended it.

He was one of those men who simply refuse to stop. When he left Baptist Mid-Missions, he came to teach at Central Seminary. When he formally retired from the seminary, he remained active in preaching and teaching. Shortly after his retirement, he and I traveled to Romania together for two weeks of teaching. By the second week, we both had come down with fever. I simply stopped eating and starved the bug away, but because Raymond was diabetic that option was not open to him. While I slowly healed, his misery was increasing, but he kept teaching his classes. In fact, he and I went repeatedly to the Russian Market and the consignaţi, where he would search for broken watches. He worked on repairing the watches at his desk every afternoon and evening. By the end of the two weeks, he had fixed enough watches to present every Romanian student with a functional timepiece, and he did it all while fighting off an ugly bout of sickness.

On our return trip to the United States, we flew out of Budapest. I couldn’t wait to get him to the hotel so he could finally rest. The problem was that he knew I’d never seen Budapest. Sicker than ever, he went and hired a cab to spend the afternoon taking us to the most popular sights in the city. That was his character: giving, sacrificial, and utterly unstoppable.

Dr. Buck loved languages. He would never admit it, but he was fluent in French and Sango. He also knew a fair amount of Italian, a bit of Spanish, and enough German so that he “wouldn’t starve or have to sleep on the street.” We had great fun one day in a Hungarian restaurant, trying to order from a waiter who spoke no English when neither of us spoke Hungarian. It was a clinic in communication theory just to watch Raymond in action.

It was impossible to impose on Raymond Buck. He was irrepressibly good-humored, typically a bit mischievous, and generous to a fault. He was a great traveling companion, not least because he always seemed to be able to find ice cream, which, next to Catherine, must have been the great love of his life.

Speaking of Catherine, his devotion to her was complete. The two of them were engaged while she was still a student in a rather strict Christian college. Raymond once told our faculty the story of climbing (my memory fails: was it the trellis? the drainpipe?) to her dormitory window so that he could propose. When he and I traveled together, he was sometimes uncertain how to operate the e-mail. He would dictate letters for Catherine in Sango, which I would dutifully (and ignorantly) type and forward.

In fact, if I could choose one word to describe all of Dr. Buck’s doings, it would be the word faithful. To every appearance he was faithful to his family, to his calling, to his faith, to his ministry, and to his Lord. Not that he was willing to boast of it. When, upon his retirement from Central Seminary, he was presented with awards and recognitions, his response was, “Thank you, but if you knew about me what I know about myself, you would never have done this.”

When Central Seminary was looking for a president, I had pretty well determined that it was not going to be me. Dr. Raymond Buck was the man who first battered against that resolve. He never tried to argue me into a change of mind. He simply encouraged me. Once I had accepted the presidency, he became a constant encourager. The main strength of his encouragement came, not so much from what he said, but from the fact that it was backed up by a life of persistence and fidelity.

I never hesitated to point students to Dr. Buck as an example for life and ministry. Not uncommonly, conversations among professors would include remarks such as “I want to retire just like Dr. Buck,” meaning, of course, that the speaker was determined not to retire at all. To be sure, we will miss him as a friend. More importantly, we will miss him as a model. He was an example to us all of faithfulness, charity, encouragement, and perseverance. He was one remarkable man.

Contentment (Phil. iv.II)

William Cowper (1731-1800)

Fierce passions discompose the mind,
As tempests vex the sea,
But calm content and peace we find,
When, Lord, we turn to Thee.

In vain by reason and by rule
We try to bend the will;
For none but in the Saviour’s school ,
Can learn the heav’nly skill.

Since at his feet my soul has sat,
His gracious words to hear;
Contented with my present state,
I cast, on him, my care.

“Art thou a sinner, soul?” he said,
“Then how canst thou complain?
How light thy troubles here, if weigh’d
With everlasting pain!

If thou of murmuring wouldst be cur’d,
Compare thy griefs with mine;
Think what my love for thee endur’d,
And thou wilt not repine.

’Tis I appoint thy daily lot,
And I do all things well:
Thou soon shalt leave this wretched spot,
And rise with me to dwell.

In life my grace shall strength supply,
Proportion’d to thy day;
At death thou still shalt find me nigh,
To wipe thy tears away.”

Thus I, who once my wretched days
In vain repinings spent;
Taught in my Saviour’s school of grace,
Have learn’d to be content.

This essay is by Dr. Kevin T. Bauder, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). Not every professor, student, or alumnus of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.