The New Baptist Covenant--Atlanta, January 30-February1--was in many ways a wonderful experience that in certain specific ways far exceeded my expectations in providing a new place for fellowship, inspiration, and interaction for Baptists throughout North America. My wife, Betty, and I thoroughly enjoyed it and received great inspiration and sense of hope from it. Great preaching! Great messages! Great breakouts! Great fellowship! Great networking! A wonderful family reunion! I am grateful for the vision of Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Allen, Bill Underwood, and others I ought to be able to name, and I rejoice in the work that the North American Baptist Fellowship [NABF] of the Baptist World Alliance did to make this a quality event that could make NABF proud. Nothing but positive words fills my overall thoughts.
Having said that, more needs to be said about the future: Some of the additional thoughts are not quite as positive, but represent reality. I was part of the January 2007 gathering at the Carter Center in Atlanta where the planning was done for this event. I have been disappointed ever since that meeting that many present in that room who would have liked to have helped it become a greater meeting kept finding closed doors, shallow thinking, and culturally captive actions. It could have been a much better gathering with much better results and immediately planned follow-up.
As a beginning, the New Baptist Covenant gathering rates a 6-7 on a scale of 1 to 10. If the gathering was to have been a “shining example” of NABF, it was only a 2-3 on a scale of 1 to 10.
An image or two: The glasses through which the small, tightly knit core planning group was looking were very high quality glass frames. But the prescription of the lenses still produced a myopia that did not see the full diversity of race, ethnicity, culture, geography, theology, worship, Baptist heritage, and philosophy and strategy of effective Baptist Christian ministry. There was still too much of old, angry Baptist white guys who wanted to declare their freedom from one particular convention/union—the Southern Baptist Convention.
The folks who I talked to who thought this represented the Holy Grail of Baptist gatherings were also primarily former Southern Baptist Convention folks. NABF is much richer than that, and unless that full richness can be expressed in the follow-up and in future events, I would wonder what makes this gathering different from the Baptist Jubilee Advance gathering of I believe SBC, ABC, and PNBC in Atlanta City, NJ in 1964? [Which I attended at the age of 13.]
The lenses of the glasses also produced a tunnel vision that failed to see much greater diversity. The viewpoints were too narrow. We still failed to understand the Canadian perspective, the perspective of Baptist groups whose historic roots are not in far western Europe and the British Isles, and full participation of ethnic groups outside of Euro-Americans and African-Americans.
I believe the only hope is for the full spectrum of light possible to be seen through the best possible glass frames and lenses to become a reality. I believe this is best possible through the appropriate expression and participation of the full membership of NABF. The core group of former Southern Baptists need to be celebrated and appreciated for pulling off a beginning, but at the same time recognize that the full potential of this event will only come about by giving primary authority to the full spectrum of Baptists of North America. Without that, this event will compete within a few short years for the focus and attention of participants who traditionally might relate to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the American Baptist Churches in the USA. Or, it might even become the new denominational form that unites these two groups. It will not have the same potential it could have if the full diversity of NABF could impact the core values and key aspects of ongoing actions and future events.
I hope NABF will stay involved in the movement and have key, broadly-based leadership. If NABF cannot have key, broadly-based leadership, or cannot be satisfied that the vision can be broadened to more clearly reflect all of NABF, then I feel NABF will have no choice but to withdraw at some future point. Not now, but at some future point.
For many USA based denominations—many of whom were represented in the support of New Baptist Covenant—there is a place where an even broader perspective in being played out. This is in the organization known as Christian Churches Together that has formed in the past four to five years and includes Catholics, Orthodox, Mainline Protestants, Evangelical Protestants, and Pentecostals. If that broad-based group can get together around the issues of poverty and evangelism, I believe that Baptists throughout North America can get together around a new Covenant. [By the way, the executive administrator of Christian Churches Together who is helping them pull this off is Richard (Dick) Hamm who spoke to NABF in its annual meeting two years ago.]
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