In the summer of 1989, Tim and I drove from San Francisco to Las Vegas in his 1976 Chevy Nova with the fancy “four-sixty” air conditioning (i.e., roll down all four windows and drive sixty miles per hour). Married less than a year, we made the trip from “Sodom” to “Gomorrah” to attend the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.
“Southern Baptists in New Orleans this week resembled fish in a now-smaller pool choosing (yet again) to toss more of their sibling fish onto the shore. ”
Though Tim and I were brought up in Southern Baptist churches, by 1989 we knew the SBC wasn’t our community. We headed to Las Vegas that year to meet up with other like-hearted folk who were envisioning new possibilities for following Christ in the Baptist tradition—conversations from which the Alliance of Baptists and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship later grew.
Two memories stand out in my mind about that week in Las Vegas:
A 115-degree desert wind that made a person think twice about breathing.
And the presence of more polyester, pantyhose, and religious tracts than Las Vegas had seen in…well, possibly forever. Tim and I played a game from our 10th floor hotel balcony called “Spot the Baptists.” It wasn’t hard.
While the Baptists in Las Vegas that year may have resembled fish out of water, Southern Baptists in New Orleans this week resembled fish in a now-smaller pool choosing (yet again) to toss more of their sibling fish onto the shore.
“Jesus... drew his circles wide with a love-colored crayon. ”
SBC messengers voted yesterday to uphold a decision to disfellowship two churches for appointing women to serve in pastoral roles, and to begin amending the constitution of the SBC to make it clear that churches “in friendly cooperation” with the SBC must not “affirm, appoint or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.”
All this politics and posturing is as exhausting as it is alien to the way of Jesus, who drew his circles wide with a love-colored crayon. Do you recall the Epistle text from Sunday? “Let love be your only debt,” said Paul. “If you love others, you have done all that the Law demands…The commandments are summed up in this word: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Three Baptist parties:
This week, I witnessed three Baptist parties. The first, in New Orleans, was a Shun Your Neighbor party.
The second, parading down the streets of our city last Saturday, was a Love Your Neighbor party.
And the third, the very next day in the fellowship hall of First Baptist Church, was a Feed Your Neighbor party.
Of the three parties, I’m just as happy to have missed the first and beyond grateful for the other two.
In the Great Love,
P. S. If you want to read more about the Baptist hoopla this week, check out these fine articles at Baptist News Global (one of FBC’s missional partners).
From Baylor professor Mandy McMichael, A 1984 Prediction Comes True for the SBC.
From Meredith Stone, Executive Director of Baptist Women in Ministry (one of FBC’s missional partners): The Southern Baptist Convention is Wrong.
And this lovely piece from FBCDC’s friend and former executive pastor, Charlie Fuller: Embracing the Slippery Slope.