So, I am going to take this moment to place some things on the table. I am a member of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, I am ordained with an M.Div, I am married to a minister, but I am not serving a congregation, at present. There, now we all know the perspective from which I will be speaking. Now, in my past, I was a Southern Baptist, mostly because I did not know there was another option. The church of my family was a SBC congregation, and eventually, it was the church that honored my call to ministry and sent me off to college. However, when I was growing up in the late 80s and 90s, I didn’t know anything about what was going on in the larger landscape of SBC life. Our sleepy little town did not talk much of the larger happenings, and my pastor, was a young man at the time, did not see himself as a firebrand of the convention.
It was not until I got to college in 2002 that I began to learn about the recent history of the SBC. I heard about the different confessions of the SBC for the first time, and which ones were considered good and which ones were an affront to our tradition, according to my professors and state denominational leaders. During my junior year, I heard about the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship for the first time. When I say heard about it, that is what I mean. One of my peers said they were going to the CBF General Assembly in Atlanta, and that was it. At the time, I was serving as a ministry intern on the staff of an SBC congregation. Looking back, it didn’t make much difference, there was only one CBF congregation in town at the time, and I didn’t know the people you need to know to be considered for a position there.
All this to say, when I began to take part in conversations over the direction of Baptist life, I was much older and already a member of a CBF congregation.
The reason I wanted to write this is because of something I have noticed over the last couple of years. As a person who is not a member of the SBC, or in any way affiliated with the SBC, I sure do see a lot of people in CBF who spend a lot of time talking about the SBC. Specifically, how something was said/did/decided that is a bad thing. I just keep wondering why.
This last year, I heard a lot of conversations at General Assembly about how the CBF is not the SBC. Terms like “different kind of Baptist,” or “not that kind of Baptist” get thrown around a lot. Usually, this happens between people I don’t know, who are older than I am, and who remember the SBC the way it was. Many of them were active then, and had a vision of their future that was dramatically changed by what happened. They lost careers, friends, and a safe place to retreat in one decade. Every story I have heard, every article I have read, and every book published by those who would call themselves moderates or liberals is filled with pain and loss. I see how their eyes focus into that middle space where they can see their past and the hopes that person had back then.
I also hear the venom many of them use when they speak of how the SBC acts now, and I imagine they feel as if someone is dating their ex-wife. They see these people they don’t know in their house, and watch as they let the yard go. I’m sure it feels as if all the hard work they did has been destroyed, or that the name they loved so much is being drug through the mud. And I’ve experienced how it affects conversations around ministry and vision-casting. Hot topics in the congregation have to exorcise all of the demons of past pain before a new future can be dreamed of, and there has to be the caveat that it’s different from the SBC church on the other side of town. All of our worship is compared to what is going on in SBC churches, our preaching is compared to the guys in SBC mega-churches, and our seminaries are always held up to the ghosts of what was.
I wonder how long we can keep defining ourselves by what we are not. Do we have to wait until age and mortality rates cause a population shift in the CBF? As a new generation of ministers emerge; one who doesn’t remember the fights and controversy, will their voice be appreciated? I feel that the future is very bright, mostly because my friends are talented ministers who I think are going to do great things. However, I also feel that we can’t look back at our past if we are going to make that new future. We can no longer define ourselves by who we are not.
