Barnabas File

These comments on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship/American Baptist joint worship service are a logical followup to my comments earlier about the Baptist family. Last night was the closing session of the CBF General Assembly in Washington, DC, and the opening session of the ABCUSA Biennial Meeting. The worship service was an opportunity to celebrate what brings us together as Baptists. The music styles were varied as befits our diversity. Church state separation was celebrated. Missions was emphasized. Rather than feature one person as the keynote speaker, we had the opportunity to hear from Roy Medley, general secretary of ABCUSA; Tyrone Pitts, general secretary of the Progressive National Baptist Convention; and Daniel Vestal, (executive) coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. These leaders shared their insights about the values that unite Baptists generally and the personal events that have brought them together as individuals. As Vestal said, "We need to get t...

We hear a lot about "dysfunctional families" today, but I have come to the conclusion that most families fit the description. In fact, most of the family stories we have in the Bible are about troubled families beginning with Adam and Eve and their sons and going on to Abraham and his sons, David and Absalom, Hosea and Gomer, and innumerable other families. In our own families, we live with the consequences of perceived favoritism, unwise choices, and "the roads not taken." Even so, we try to get the family together for special occasions and holidays to break bread together and celebrate our common heritage. When I consider our Baptist family, I see a lot of dysfunction. As Bill Leonard has said, Baptists were conceived in such a way that conflict is assured! The slavery issue was a key conflict that resulted in the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845 and created a major division in the Baptist family in our country. In recent days, the SBC co...

As long as I can remember, I have heard Baptists talk about "the autonomy of the local church." It is a tenet of faith for most of us. In an article published by Associated Baptist Press http://www.abpnews.com/www/2469.article.print , Beth Newman comments on this idea from the perspective of a recent Baptist World Alliance symposium. She observes that the most important statement to emerge from that meeting was, "We affirm that for Baptists the local church is wholly church but not the whole church." I may unpack this more in future postings, but this is an important concept. Although we celebrate the opportunity and responsibility of each local congregation to "discover and fulfill its God-given mission" (in CBF terms), we must not forget that each congregation is just one small part of the bigger picture that God is creating that is the Kingdom or Reign of God. Just like a massive mosaic made up of many colored tiles, all are necessary to make a coh...

Here's a report on my latest experience on the web. I have discovered Facebook. If you are not familiar with Facebook, it is an online site that facilitates social networking. Wikipedia defines a social network as "a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of relations," such as values, friends, kinship, etc. With Facebook, you can invite people to be your "friends" online. If they agree, you then have access to their friends list and can grow your network of friends. Of course, you can invite folks to join directly or browse established networks, but I have enjoyed "mining" other people's lists! It is a bit addictive. This discovery has resulted in some observations: First, our networks tend to overlap with one another. I started out with one colleague and pretty soon found myself in networks that involved young adults, those who work with young adults, former ca...

During the spring, our church provided a Sunday School emphasis called Leadership First. Fifteen church members were exposed to a 13 week study that provided (very) brief surveys of the Old and New Testaments, Baptist beliefs, Sunday School principles, age group training, and class observation and evaluation. Although the content was helpful, the opportunity for these leaders to spend time together, build community, and dream about the future of our church were probably the most important outcomes. The primary evaluation by the group was, "It was too short." For more information, go to Caleb's Cafe http://www.calebscafe.com and look for the "Leadership First" group.

Forgive me if I continue down memory lane in this posting, but we have been doing some cleaning and rearranging at our house, and I came across a paper I wrote when I was in college. OK, I haven't saved all the papers I wrote in college or seminary, but this is a very special paper to me. Let me set the context. In 1965, I was a senior at the University of Southern Mississippi, a public university. My major was history with a minor in religion and philosophy. At the time, there was not a single African-American student at the college. Our sister institution, Ole Miss (the University of Mississippi) had been integrated about two years earlier with the assistance of the Army. I was taking an ethics course with Robert Arrington, a young professor still working on his doctorate who was, to the best of my knowledge, not a Christian. When we were assigned a term paper, I asked Mr. Arrington if I could write a paper on "Christian Ethics and Racial Discrimination." He not...