Bill Leonard says being Baptist is messy. Bill Hull says being Baptist is an experience. So it should follow that what you have in hand is one Baptist’s narrative of a messy experience. Not so! What you have in hand is an ordered chronicle, a unique story, of a solitary human being—a man who arguably has been the most important Baptist of his generation, the most formative Baptist Christian of the past sixty years.

Cecil Sherman, in sharing his autobiography, has written about some things he had rather forget. Much of this has been dredge work, a labor of mind, heart, emotion, and will. Yet, who better than he can share a view from the inside of the Baptist family in this country since the 1950s? So with moist eyes and set jaw, Cecil bids you join him for “his story”—amazingly, a slice of our own free-church history as well.

Here is joy and here is pain; memories sweet and bitter, emotions tender and rugged, dreams realized and dreams shattered, and throughout a tough love for the people called Baptists.

Cecil Sherman would never admit to heroism, but if medals of honor were ever pinned on husbands and fathers for their battles, he would wear a few. Family has always been his passion, while his fierce love for Dot during her years with Alzheimer’s surpasses all his struggles with pastoral problems, SBC politics, Gatlinburg gangs, Peace Committee futility, CBF coordination, or the birth pangs of a dozen new theological schools partnering on his watch.

One personal note: Cecil was present when my seminary president colleagues and I went to Glorieta, New Mexico, in 1986 to meet with the SBC Peace Committee. He listened in silence to our ill-fated attempt at placating that incorrigible group. The next morning, he and I had breakfast together. Through tears he told me, “You fellows have sold the store.” Later that day he resigned from the committee. Now I know more than before the truth in the adage, “Even a dwarf on a giant’s shoulder sees farther of the two.”

So, welcome! Climb upon a giant’s shoulders and read along. Remember too: Life isn’t about how to survive storms, but how to dance in the rain.

Cecil Sherman is one Baptist who has danced.