Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 14, 1993                   TAG: 9311110011
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Cody Lowe
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

BAPTIST LEADER WOULD HAVE BEEN PLEASED WITH HIS LEGACY

Unofficially, the annual meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia is as much about seeing old friends as it is about adopting a budget.

Ministers get to see their professional colleagues and parishioners from former pastorates. Lay people - many of whom serve year after year - get to visit again with folks they only see once every 12 months.

And, despite inevitable conflicts over doctrine and policy, there is a pervasive atmosphere of a family reunion - where you may not really like everybody, but you have to love them because you're related.

And like many a family reunion, every year there are some losses to acknowledge.

For Virginia's Southern Baptists, this was the year they had to mourn the death last summer of one of their most colorful personalities - Ben Bruner.

He was, as denomination historian Fred Anderson described him, one of the true characters of the state association.

Bruner, a retired pastor who lived in Richmond, was an unmistakable figure who made his appearances on the floor of the annual meeting at predictable times.

As deliberations on an issue were starting to get unbearable, Ben would come to the rescue.

Stooped under the weight of about four score years, his flowing white mane was always visible as he made his way to one of the floor microphones.

"Mister (or Madame) Chairman," he would invariably say, "I call the previous question."

That was parliamentary talk for a vote to cut off discussion on the issue at hand. It is a motion that takes precedence over all others on the floor, and it can't be debated.

Though it sometimes made people who still had something to say angry, he nearly always got his "second" and an affirmative vote. He told an interviewer once that he had no doctrinal ax to grind, no campaign he was trying to advance.

Bruner, who was a lawyer before he moved to the ministry, just had a sense that there came a point in every deliberation when most people had had enough.

Though he didn't especially want to be remembered as "the man who shut down the business of the meetings," he will be.

That will be only a part of his legacy, though. He will be remembered, as he was this week, as a kindly man who cared passionately about his God and the people called Virginia Baptists.

As a matter of fact, business proceeded apace as Virginia Baptists met in Richmond last week.

Hearty volunteers stepped forward at about the right times to "call the previous question" - sometimes in what semed a deliberately Bruneresque manner.

I have a feeling Ben would be pleased by that - by evidence that his beloved Baptists will continue to get their business done, even if one of their legendary figures is no longer among them. Except in spirit, of course.

Input file was 0011 Output file was /asst/csi/1111/pass2/0011