seats at God's table...

Yesterday was a sad day. I was invited to sit down with a couple of other local pastors to talk about the future of the Waco Regional Baptist Association. The WRBA is an association of local Baptist churches—open to all Baptist churches (CBF, National Baptists, Progressive National Baptists, SBC, independent Baptists)--that covers McLennan county and some neighboring areas without an association. Tim Randolph, a Calvary member, is the director of the WRBA. He is doing his level best to make the WRBA relevant in a time when denominational ties are meaning less and less. In my opinion, he is on the right track in seeking feedback, doing some strategic planning and so forth.

The discussion of the WRBA drew me to the table. That’s the topic that drew the other two pastors and a facilitator to the table. The topic went from specifics about the WRBA to our churches and other churches. It was in this transition that I became disheartened. One pastor of mid-sized Baptist church noted that he only spent time with epistemologically like-minded pastors and had no interest in associating with professionals who did not fit his intellectual preferences. The other pastor, from a similarly sized congregation in Waco, said that there was little energy or interest in networking or mingling with others that were not theologically inclined as that congregation is.

From these comments, one might deduce that their congregations are monochromatic, an affliction affecting all parts of the spectrum of Waco church life, and of one mind theologically. One might also deduce that the inhabitants of these churches enjoy their lack of diversity and wear their homogeneity as safe, warm blanket.

These guesses could be wrong. I hope they are. But as a culture we are drawn to the same much more often than we are drawn to differences.

I have a particular bent to my theology; I also realize that my theology is far from perfect. I hope that I lack the hubris and arrogance of floating around thinking that I have all the answers and that everyone else is an unenlightened brute. I learn more by being challenged. Others stretch my faith. This isn’t something to fear but something to seek.

I think of the diversity of opinion and background of the disciples. Simon the zealot had as one of his missions by virtue of being a zealot to kill Jewish traitors. Matthew was one of those Jewish traitors. But Jesus overcame that fear, that suspicion so that both could sit at a table and dine with him and dine with each other. If you read Matthew’s gospel or John’s gospel or Peter’s letters, you encounter some diversity of thought and theology. Yet, Christ is the Lord and centerpiece of each of them.

I give thanks for the diversity inherent to Calvary. I give thanks for a God big enough to embrace all of us, correct all of us and use all of us. I give thanks that there are tables at which to sit and people from which to learn within Calvary and within the WRBA.

Recent Reading:

Henry Emerson Fosdick, Christianity and Progress; Ralph Wood, Preaching and Professing