Throughout the first weeks of 2023, a question has been making the rounds at FBC. In the January meetings of all our leaders and teams—Faith Formation, Mission, Facilities Improvement, Give It Forward, Church Council and FBC staff—Pastor Eric and I asked our people to respond to the question: “What are you most hoping for in 2023 for First Baptist Church?”
We’ll share a summary of the responses this Sunday, at the congregational meeting. They reveal what I suspect many of you already know: that First Baptist Church is standing at a crossroads…at a moment of decision and action. We are not alone. Churches everywhere, especially after the pandemic, are facing the same choice: “Will we thrive, or will we continue on this path of slow decline?”
Spoiler alert: I am feeling enormous hope for FBC. And when I use the word “hope” I’m not talking about optimism. In fact, optimism can be the enemy of hope.
In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins recalls a conversation he once had with Admiral James Stockdale who was held as a prisoner for nearly eight years in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Viet Nam War.
Though Stockdale himself was tortured more than twenty times during his imprisonment, as the highest-ranking American officer in that prison, it became Stockdale’s goal to help as many fellow prisoners as possible survive their ordeal.
When Collins asked how he survived, Stockdale said: “I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”
Collins asked, “Who didn’t make it out?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Stockdale said. “The optimists.”
“The optimists,” he continued, “were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”
This was Stockdale’s conclusion: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” (Jim Collins, Good to Great, p. 83-85)
I’ll say it again: I feel enormous hope for First Baptist Church. And…we are standing at a crossroads. Will you invest an hour after worship this Sunday and come to the congregational meeting? I believe it will be a first step toward new life for this church we love.
With love and great hope,
