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This is My Story by Paul Beasley-Murray (Wipf & Stock, 2018)

Paul Beasley-Murray, This is My Story: A Story of Life, Faith and Ministry by (Wipf & Stock, 2018)

Last year Baptist minister Keith Clements published an autobiography of his life: Look Back in Hope. We know have a second autobiography from a similar period in this account of his life by Paul Beasley-Murray. Both autobiographies interestingly mention the other in passing from their time overlapping as students in Cambridge. Paul is the son of George Beasley-Murray, one of the leading Baptist New Testament scholars of the twentieth century. He followed his father into Baptist ministry, into doing a New Testament doctorate and into being Principal of Spurgeon's College. Here is a story of what it is like to be child of the manse and of college (George taught at Spurgeon's College and the International Baptist Theological Seminary while Paul was growing up). Paul although following in his father's footsteps has charted his own course - he trained for ministry at Northern Baptist College while doing his doctorate at Manchester, spent two years as a Baptist missionary with BMS and had two long pastorates in churches that grew.

Apparently when Douglas McBain published his book Fire Over the Waters in 1997 many wanted to read it for what they hoped would be juicy stories of someone on the inside of Baptist institutional life. Many may want to read Paul's book for his account of what happened at Spurgeon's when he was Principal. The story of why Paul stepped down as Principal is one that never been told (although as Paul points out an unnamed version did appear in Alistair Ross's Evangelicals in Exile). It has been a unspoken moment, which no hint of difficulties is given in either Ian Randall's history of English Baptists in the 20th Century or his history of Spurgeon's College (A School of Prophets). In the chapter Paul sets out to tell the story honestly and carefully from his own perspective on the difficulties that he faced during this period. The vice-principal, tutors at the College and the governing body do not come out well. It is a very sad account, especially with the impact it had on his children, and it is testimony to Paul in the way he responded to the fallout and the silence until now that he has kept. As Paul says it is for others to tell of their own involvement. I know Spurgeon's is a different place to how it sounds it was during the 1980s and some of this is down to Paul's innovations and modernisation, which arguably saved the college at that time.

Outside of the Spurgeon's chapter, the chapters on his time at Altrincham and Chelmsford Central give in an insight to the life of being church pastor and leader and Paul's own particular style and approach. The impact of church growth theory, his involvement in Mainstream and then from 1994 Ministry Today and more recently the College of Baptist Ministry. I could have done without the appendixes on his leadership style and why he is a Christian and other bits - these are typically Paul Beasley-Murray pieces. I would have been more interested in his reflections on wider Baptist life, but then perhaps the title of the book is a clue - This is My Story - which stresses his story. 

Paul has had a mixed reception amongst Baptists and reading this autobiography has the potential for people to see him differently, but for others it may confirm their already held view. Regardless This is My Story is well worth a read as a story of one Baptist minister living though the last fifty years. Perhaps Paul and Keith have started a trend, which will see similar accounts emerge. I for one would love to read them.

 

Once More Baptists and Same Sex Marriage: A Response to the Current Reality

It's over two years since I last wrote any on Baptist issues on this blog. The last two posts were on how the Baptist Union was responding to same sex marriage. This new post is compelled by the same subject.

The issue then was what Associations (regional bodies) were going to do when the Council of the Baptist Union acknowledged that the Declaration of Principle meant churches were at liberty to discern together (in conversation with Scripture and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit) whether to register or not as places of worship in which same sex marriages could be conducted and as a result that ministers would not be barred, if church was affirming and conscience allowed, to officiate or be involved in some way.

Since then some Associations have dissented from this position and have looked and are looking for ways they could exercise control over ministerial settlement and in one case to extend that control over churches who might seek to register.

As was clear in March 2016, the issue is not settled.

In December 2016 I was part of a group of ministers who wrote a statement which called British Baptists to have the courage not to seek to control and divide the Union. It did not have the impact I might have hoped as the two sides - those who are affirming and those who are not - have not, at least to my knowledge, had any spaces or even sought any spaces to be properly begin the conversation we said we still believe is waiting to begin.

What is emerging is a situation of impasse, which desperately needs someone to find a way to gave people round a table. (With some regret I'm not sure there is anyone with enough clout and respect in the Union to do so. I'd be happy to be proved wrong.) 

This is an issue again around the tension between Baptist identity and evangelical identity. This question of identity - what does it mean to be churches, associations and colleges in the Baptist Union - has been rumbling on for decades now. 

A second issue is around whether we are just independent churches or are we interdependent, and if the latter, what kind of authority or weight, do we give to Associations and Unions, especially if we believe they are an expression of being church and not just a network or alliance. If they are ecclesial in same way, how do Association and Union Councils ensure a means of discerning the mind of Christ which take into account all their constituent churches.*

The current problem being I suggest that both Association and Union Councils are relatively small bodies in terms of numbers which are not anyway near enough representative, and therefore what they might say to the churches does not carry enough weight to cause them to listen. Related to that, currently Association and Union Assemblies (larger gatherings of Baptists) do not give any space to deliberation and so to the opportunity to do more representative listening (which of course would take time).

Four Suggestions

I suggest that all Baptists might re-read carefully the statement 'The Courage to be Baptist' and as appropriate to your place in the life of the Union seek to act on it.

I suggest that Associations, and especially those who are unhappy with the Union's current position, need to engage in much longer listening processes, which genuinely have an openness to seek what the churches are saying, along with the humility to admit that there are some who hold a different position from their own for biblical and theological reasons and so to seek to better understand those reasons (and likewise those who are affirming need to admit that they may not understand those reasons, biblical and theological, for those who are not affirming of same sex relationships).

I suggest that those churches and minsters who are affirming do not simply use the Declaration of Principle as a trump card, that says we are free to do what we like, because at the same time we are involved in ecclesial relationships with Associations and Unions that, when done well, are also able to discern the mind of Christ and therefore deserve and perhaps even require us to listen open to the Spirit's wisdom. At the moment, I recognise that where we are currently it is perhaps difficult to see our Associations and Union doing the kind of careful listening that engages with Bible, theology and experience in ways that do justice to each - this sadly is the poverty of our tradition, that although we have the theory of doing theology together, we do not have the practice (or at least enough of it).** 

I suggest that those who care for our shared life together as a Baptist Union and for LGBT people in our churches that we pray that we can find ways to continue a conservation with God and with one another, even where it feels difficult, painful and something we'd rather not do being.

As Sam Wells has said, 'If we can't all stay in the room and talk to each other we're telling the world our gospel isn't true.' 

 

* John Colwell has said that what is needed is for every level and form of ecclesial gathering needs to recognize and affirm the ecclesial character of every other level and form of ecclesial gathering and for all to act as such, meaning committed to a patient and humble attentiveness to the Spirit through the attentiveness to the presence and voice of the other. John Colwell, 'Integrity and Relatedness', Baptist Quarterly 48.1 (2017), 21.   

** Brian Haymes has said that 'contemporary British Baptists, children of their age and cultures, are nothing if not pragmatic. We have a wariness of "theology" for we can fear that is remote, academic, out of touch with the realities of life, not least in the church .... But theology as shared thought, speech, and action before God known in Jesus, is crucial to the life of the church.' Brian Haymes, 'Still Blessing the Tie that Binds' in Anthony Clarke (ed.), For the Sake of the Church (2014), 97.