andygoodliff

Beyond 400: history, risk, and inclusivity

We are 5 posts into the Beyond400 project. What might we be hearing?

1. The importance of engaging with our history and telling our story - I hope that some new projects might emerge in new partnerships between Baptist Historical Society and others. The last popular (a shortish book with lots of pictures) telling of the English Baptist story appeared in the early 1990s. We are long-over due for some books and other media telling. BMS have led the way with short videos on Thomas Helwys and William Carey. We must be careful here that while we may talk a lot about history and roots, at some point, we've got some work to do, we really believe what we're saying.

2. The need to be more prophetic, creative and risky in our mission which has been summed up as 'Baptists who love'. As long as we have rich theological understanding of the word 'love' here, yes and amen. There is a feeling from some that we are risk adverse - I suggested last year we were in danger of being dull and bland - and that we don't support new forms of church.

This voice is to be expected (and welcomed) as four of first five voices are all involved in new forms of church and mission - Peter is a church planter and is key leader in the Incarnate Network church planting network; Juliet heads up Urban Expression; Chris heads up the Light Project and Carmel (I think) is about to join Urban Expression. While the fifth voice Rowena, is in a minister in more run-of-the-mill Baptist church, she is anything but run-of-the-mill!

A question: How do the those of us who are not engaged in this kind of mission respond to this voice? Will we say, thanks its a nice sentiment, a wonderful dream, but come on ... or will we say, we're not sure that all this desire for 'newness, creativity, risk' is really necessary, we're doing alright ... or will we say, it's great you're doing this, but its a bit beyond what we are comfortable with, so we wish you well ... or will we say, is there a part for us, can you help us take a risk?

A comment: There is perhaps a concern that those not engaged in this form of mission feel second-best, feel like they are not doing proper church (I know that definitely goes the other way too!) or relevant mission ... The 'pioneers' must appreciate and champion the steadfast witness of those who have sought over many years to be faithful to the gospel. I've made a similar comment before in this regard here.

3. A conversation about being inclusive. I think we should emphasize that this is two conversations, one about how do we include those outside of the church (however we define 'outside') and one about how do we include those within our churches in terms of representation, participation and voice. Some of the comments in thread sometimes collapsed these into one.

These are conversations around hospitality, power and theology.

There is a growing literature on hospitality, church and mission which needs engaging with and distilling.

Power is pervasive - many of those commenting feel powerless in the face of what they see as the powerful. The Futures Group needs to be careful not to sound condescending when they respond with 'we're listening'. While complete transparency may not be possible (for good reasons), there is a real need for openness. Equally there is more possibility and opportunity and desire to engage with the life of our Union, than I've seen before in my short experience. I hope this translates into a reinvigorated Baptist Union, which takes more seriously our life together. (This definitely seems to have been the case with the Baptist Union of Scotland).

Theology and inclusion recognises that we face some serious theological differences on some issues. There are some who feel we are moving too fast, others too slow. There are some who feel (on both sides) that there is nothing to talk about - the answers are clear - and others who feel that there are no simple answers.

Finally, there is the real sense and I've tried to make this point several times (with thanks to Tim and Clare), that as we embrace some, others will surely feel excluded. So how we conduct these conversations - at this point many will turn to the phrase 'with deep listening' - is vital for the future of our being church - patience, generosity, courage and an attention to word-care are the virtues we need to grow amongst us.

These are some of my reflections so far.

Maurice Glasman on the Labour Party and perhaps Church Meetings

I'm a bit of a Maurice Glasman and Blue Labour fan and was reading a recent interview with him, and the quote below stood out to be interesting with regard the debate us Baptists are having and the role of church meetings, Council, and Assembly.

The first is a genuine change in what I call the relational culture of the party. The reality is the average number of people who turn up for branch meetings is 12, the average number who speak is five. So that means there are seven people who don’t say a word. We’ve got to look at that and say, ‘What kind of culture is this?’

So, from an organising point of view, we’re thinking about bringing in suggestions that everyone says their name and where they are from at the beginning of the meeting – just to hear their voice.

Secondly, that every meeting will include a one-to-one conversation. Once again, it’s about getting away from the idea that the only way to get things done is to get pieces of paper out and pass motions. We’ve got to broaden the base of the party.

And then we come to the key thing – being prepared to actually listen and act on things that people care about rather than the things we think they should care about.

 

The Travail of the Baptist 'Expert'?

Last year saw the publication of an excellent collection of essays on baptist hermeneutics. The book ends with responses from two non-baptists - Brian Brock (Aberdeen) and W. John Lyons (Bristol) In Lyons' reflections he makes the following argument:

Baptist churches, in my view, desperately need to find and offer an alternative to our contemporary culture that is as authentic, as Christo-centric, and as radical, as is possible.

To create such space for this to happen, Baptist churches will need the help of such "experts" as they have to hand, whether such individuals are theologians, biblical scholars, pastors, sages, or even suitable outsiders ("critical friends?"). These people are needed because Baptist churches and their partner denominations must now begin to think about their present day failings and about what must be done to make their communities truly Christ-centred, life-giving, and prophetic. They will need to listen to those who try to facilitate and enhance their church life, however harsh and unreasonable such aid might seem at the time, rather than to those who merely pontificate to them from on high as to what it should be like. They will need to listen to those who will be content to offer critical comments on, even voice outright disagreements with, the community's interpretation of scripture without seeking to smother the life out of such readings with their own prideful or lazy interpretations. Perhaps most tellingly of all, they will have to learn to value such people more, publicly encouraging them to speak freely and often, and submitting to their arguments and conclusions as the community's developing wisdom requires.

....

... Baptist experts, it seems to me, often seemed reticent to speak too strongly about what they see, not because they doubt their views, but rather because they tend to regard their roles as being ones that involve cajoling, persuading, and easing the way and not as ones that involve instruction, command, and assertion. They are wary of being counted with the pontifcators mentioned above. But here is their quandary writ large. Instruction, command, and assertion are exactly what prophets within a community must do at times because that is exactly what prophetic words requires of them.

(William John Lyons, 'In Appreciation of "Reluctant" Prophets' in Helen Dare and Simon Woodman (eds.), The "Plainly Revealed" Word of God? Baptist Hermeneutics in Theory and Practice (Mercer, 2011), pp.299-301)

Lyons makes the argument that we don't listen enough to our "experts" (this is possibly an unfortunate word) and at the same time our "experts" don't speak enough to be heard.

There will be undoubtedly some Baptists who will be hostile to Lyons suggestions that we 'submit' to anything other than Christ and the 'plain' reading of scripture. The title (and content) of the book rightly wants to question whether there is such thing as a 'plain' reading. I would argue that those who claim to hold to a plain reading of scripture are in fact, ultimately submissive to those who claim to present this 'plain' reading, and therefore, it is a naive and false claim that we only submit to Christ and scripture.

I don't think we should be afraid of Lyons use of the word 'submit' here. In the footnote to the sentence that speaks of submitting, Lyons writes 'the kind of submission I have in mind does not involve genuflecting to positions of authority, but rather involves a communal recognition of a certain individual's possession of a prophetic mandate to speak to the churches and a resolve to listen to what that person has to say and to act upon it.'

It would seem to me, having communcal recognised the prophet/expert, and listened to their words, we also practice communal discernment of whether the prophet/expert has preached the gospel. Here the Mennonite practice mentioned in Presence: Giving and Receiving God (which I've just reviewed), would recognise that their remains a need for the community to weigh what they hear.

It seems also important to acknowledge that not every expert is a prophet. Theological or scholarly learning does not make one automatically a prophet.

Steve Holmes (a Baptist expert!?), perhaps offers some caution, that we don't press to hard for the uniqueness of the 'expert' in two articles that argue for 'the clarity and perspicuity of scripture' (see his 2010 BQ article, 'Baptists and the Bible' and his 2011 IJST article 'Kings, Professors, and Ploughboys').

Paul Fiddes (another Baptist expert!?) has also recently presented the case for the Christian scholar in the life of the church. He claims that 'the professional scholar has stood in the place of conflicting discourses, in the market-place of secular culture, and has aimed to connect the Christian faith with other disciplines of knowledge ... From this perspective, the scholar has gudiance to offer the local church in shaping its mission, as it gather to find the mind of Christ together' and 'to assist church members in working out their "everyday theology", in negotiating the demands of Christian discipleship with the ambiguities and pressures of modern society' ('Dual Citizenship in Athens and Jerusalem' in Questions of Identity, p.140)

I have argued previously that we need to pay more attention to and value more deeply the theologians amongst us, to those that we have released to do the work of deep listening to scripture and the church tradition and speak prophetically into the challenges we face. Our problem often is we think anyone and everyone can discern the mind of Christ apart from the 'expert'.

Is their a place for the Baptist theologian and scholar in our life? I hope so. With bold humility we need to be prepared to listen and they need to be prepared to speak. In these days, Lyons is right to say this is 'desperately needed'.

Bristol Baptist College looking for new Tutor

On the retirement of Ernest Lucas, Bristol Baptist College are looking for a new tutor. More details here.

Baptist History Conference

The 2012 Baptist Historical Society Summer School and the Centre for Baptist History and Heritage
International Conference

Freedom from the Powers: Perspectives from Baptist History

4th July - 7th July 2012
Regent's Park College, Oxford
marking the 400th anniversary of Thomas Helwys' The Mystery of Iniquity

Main Speakers include

Dr. Michael Bordeaux
Professor Malcolm Evans
Professor David Killingray
Dr Toivi Pilli
Dr Alison Searle
Professor John Briggs

Further details found here

I'm hoping to give a short paper.

Book Review: Presence: Giving and Receiving God

J. Alexander Sider and Isaac S. Villegas, Presence: Giving and Receiving God (Cascade, 2011), 217pp

This is a good book. A treat. A collection of sermons and reflections on scripture from two younger theologians (one - Sider - who got his PhD from Duke under Stanley Hauerwas). I like good preaching. I like to read it as well as hear it. In a week since Driscoll accused the UK of having no good preachers, this book is a reminder that good and faithful preaching is not getting on a big enough stage, getting a name, and a book and a stadium tour, but its about the week to week searching the scriptures, listening to the world, and preaching the word of God. Now Sider and Villegas have a book out, but there will be no accompanying tour and they probably won't sell many copies (although they should!), but what they offer us is theology made real for Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In eight sections (with the headings: hope, communion, desire, power, money, salvation, strangers and conclusion) and thirty-five sermons we are offered theological reflections on the scripture, that open up new avenues of thought (Sider and Villegas lean on the learning and wisdom of Tom Wright, Rowan Williams, Stanley Hauerwas and Herbert McCabe and also Barth, Bonheoffer, Luther, and many others) and sometimes remind us again of why we need to hear an old thought again.

The introduction challenged me with the Mennonite practice of the congregation responding after the preacher has returned to his 'pew'. 'The congregation is asked to discern whether or not the gospel was preached, and if it was indeed preached, then to discern what this gospel many mean for our lives' (viii). The sermons we are offered them present us with the scripture, but leave some, if not a lot, of work for the congregation to ask what this means (the preacher doesn't overdo the application). I like that kind of preaching, its what I think preaching should be.

Food for the soul and another example of why Wipf & Stock (with their 3 imprints, of which Cascade is one) are publishing some of the best theology out there.

 

Keith Clements on 'Baptist Family'

Keith Clements back in 1985 wrote this about 'family' language in association with church, which seems a possible corrective to the wide useage of the phrase 'Baptist family':

The notion of the "church family" is in the first place generally used in an extremely vague manner. At most it seems to mean that the comunity of the church is for all ages, both sexes and "all types": diversity is the spice of its life. Further, it has to be asked why so many churches have opted for this image of themselves at precisely the time when the family itself, as a social institution, is [sic] in such a state of confusion and rapid change. The assumption behind the usage of the "church family" seems to be that everyone knows, immediately and without reflection, what "family" means and that therefore it is quite clear what "the church as family" will mean too. But that is exactly the problem facing many people in contemporary society: just what is the family today? In particular, what are family obligations supposed to be? ... The fellowship church thus adopts for itself a term which is at best atmospheric, conveying a sort of feeling of belonging together. But by itself it cannot convey the actual nature of the commitments which that belonging entails. Morever, it cannot convey anything of the commitments which that particular community has towards those who do not belong to it - a crucial question for any community claiming to be the church [1]. For churches to adopt this ill-defined "family" image so blithley and with so little reflection, is hardly responsible. But perhaps it is the very woolliness which is so attractive, in offering an escape from the aloneness on undefined terms.

Keith Clements, 'The Covenant and Community' in Bound To Love: The Covenant Basis of Baptist Life and Mission (Baptist Union, 1985), pp.57-58.

[1] Stuart Murray made a similar argument in an article in the Baptist Times, June 18, 2010.

Clements is here talking about the 'fellowship-church' (a loving community). He also writes about the 'government-church' (a hierarchical community) and the dangers of the family image here are more apparent: the authority of 'fathers' and 'men' and the submission and silencing of 'women' and 'children'. See Steve Holmes recent related argument why Baptists cannot be complementarians.

I think Clements comments still stand, in that its current useage is theologically-thin. However, I think it might be rescued or at least made thicker, which I'll blog about later.

Beyond 400: British Baptists and their Future

Over the last few months a few of us have been putting together a project which seeks to gather 40 different voices, but hopefully also a lot more - in a conversation about what lies beyond 400 hundred years for Baptists in Britain.

We want this to be a positive contribution filled with hopeful imagination to wider conversations about the future of the BUGB.

The project/conversation launches next week here.

Please join in.

Once More, The Deliverance of God

The latest Scottish Journal of Theology 65.1 (January 2012) contains two more articles on Douglas Campbell's The Deliverance of God. First an article review by Alan Torrance (which reads basically as the paper he gave a few weeks ago at King's) and second a response from Campbell, 'Beyond Justification in Paul: The Thesis of The Deliverance of God' (which is a revised version of his response at the SBL gathering in November 2009 to Douglas Moo, Michael Gorman and Ann Jervis).

Also in this edition of SJT is another article in the long running debate about the relationship between the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of Election in the theology of Karl Barth that began with Bruce McCormack's chapter 'Grace and Being' in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth in 2000. This latest article sees Kevin Hector respond a second time.

Some Christmas Reading

Why Christmas isn't over yet from Richard Beck

Karl Barth, an evangelical doctrine of baptism and infant baptism - food for thought for us baptists? Anthony R. Cross take note.

30 years of christmas sermons - and 30 ideas for me to borrow!

why pray from Ben Myers

thoughts on evangelism and mission from glen marshall 1 2 3 4

also congratulations to simon woodman on getting his phd