This article is the third episode in the sporadic series on what it means to be Baptist. It’s based on the “Four Fragile Freedoms” from Walter Shurden’s book, The Baptist Identity. Short book, big implications. The previous two articles were about Bible Freedom and Soul Freedom. More or less, being Baptist means you don’t need some person to keep the Bible or God’s grace from the people. We all have equal access to them.
The third of these Fragile Freedoms is Church Freedom. Church Freedom demands that there is no ecclesial (church) authority that tells a local church what to do. So, our Catholic sisters and brothers just celebrated the selection of a new Pope, which is a big deal for their faith. The Pope, in that tradition, sets a lot of direction for the entire Church. Local parishioners attend local congregations which all get their wisdom and direction from the local priests who answer to bishops. Bishops answer to archbishops who answer to cardinals and the cardinals answer to the Pope who is taking orders from God. It’s a very neat and orderly system.
Baptists are many things, but neat and orderly they ain’t.
Each Baptist church is locally owned and operated by the consensus and direction of the members of that congregation. They most often vote democratically about major decisions. There’s no bishop of Rocky Top to tell us what we need to be doing in Oak Ridge. The good thing (and the terrifying thing) about the Baptist church is that they make up their own minds.
Now, to be clear, there has been a modern trend of some Baptist denominations (*cough* the Southern Baptist Convention *cough*) acting a bit more hierarchical and trying to demand changes and direct policy in local congregations, but that’s not what it means to be historically Baptist.
Real talk: there are some days where I wish we didn’t work this way. I wish I had a cardinal to call and get people in line. Every now and then, it would be nice to just get marching orders and start marching. Baptists take time and effort and about a half a dozen meetings to decide to do anything.
But in my decades of ministry experience, I have most often found God to be at work in the slow processes and the things that take time and effort. If we are trying to build God’s Kingdom, if we’re trying to build a better world that God intends for all of us, shouldn’t that be something that takes time and effort and not just a statement signed by some old dude in some big office in some far-off city? Shouldn’t that be the work of all God’s people?
If so, bad news. Because that means that all of us have to do something. We can’t wait for someone else to do it or to tell us to do it. We all have to put in some time and some effort.