Within the short span of eight days, I attended the General Assembly of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship as well as the biennial meeting of the American Baptist Churches USA. Somewhere in the midst of meetings and reunions and worship services, I heard a story about a little girl who hurt her toe.
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that you hurt your toe,” her sympathetic minister said. “Tell me, which toe did you injure?” The little girl very emphatically announced that she had hurt her “market toe.”
Connie Stinson
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Confused and curious, the minister asked, “Your market toe? Which one is that?”
The girl removed her shoe and pointed to her big toe, surprised that her minister clearly lacked the basic knowledge of a child’s anatomy. “This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home …..”
Going to two Baptist meetings often leaves me wishing I’d been the little piggy that stayed home. I am among the (tired) Baptists who find themselves aligned with both the ABC and CBF. Yes, in the words of the good preacher from Kansas who took center stage during the ABC’s climactic worship service in Overland Park, Kan., we did “… the exact same thing …” back-to-back, in two different venues. Why?
Here’s why — we are different, yet we are the same. And as I look back, I am reminded once again that seeing unity in diversity stirs a spiritual awakening within me.
Two moments in time, one from each meeting, stand as personal revelations of this larger truth. At the ABC’s biennial, I had a good visit with a pastor I had never met. His unusual circumstances revealed vast differences between our ministry settings. Yet we resonated with the shared conviction that collective, spiritual discernment is just as difficult as it is important for the local church. The Biennial Mission Summit Conversations facilitated the in-depth dialogue that brought this unifying “aha” between strangers from two different worlds.
At the General Assembly, I told David Burroughs, co-founder of Passport, that the missions camp organization has literally raised excellent denominational servant leaders. This personal conviction is a product of my evolved observation made over the past few years. I count myself blessed to have made the observation and related it to Burroughs. Without Passport’s youth — many of whom have now grown into Baptist leaders — the CBF would not have the bright future it currently enjoys.
This truth emerged “boldly” to me last week as I saw the General Assembly through the eyes of my daughter. It was her first assembly. As a CBF Fellow and full-time minister in her own right, I realized — through her barrage of logistical questions, easily answered by a CBF veteran but not so obvious to a newby — that she represented a New CBF.
Like hundreds if not thousands of others, this faithful 29-year-old leader is a product of 21st-century denominational nurturing that had its start at age 12 when she first went to Passport. With its larger population of young leaders, CBF has a bright future not realized in previous decades among Baptists. Thanks, David and Colleen Burroughs. Investment in the Christian youth of our country significantly contributes to a now-growing stability among Protestant, evangelical churches previously in decline.
Yes, the two Baptist denominations in which my church and I find identity are very different from one another. The ABC is currently comprised of older, slower, albeit wiser and even more mature leaders, resulting in programming that provokes exceptional spiritual guidance to this pastor. The CBF is comprised of energy and youth, but it is yet comparatively less-settled in organization and leadership.
As different as the two groups are in life stage, both care about exactly the same Baptist distinctives, and both provide necessary avenues through which truth and encouragement are known.
I walk away from both national meetings convinced that my belief in Baptist distinctives really matters. What I am doing as a local pastor matters. Even when I am daunted by local obstacles between now and the next national meetings, I must and will persevere in the name of Jesus Christ, for together we are building a kingdom.
It all starts with remembering that each little piggy has a place in that kingdom.
Connie Stinson (cnstins@aol.com) is senior pastor of Luther Rice Memorial Baptist Church in Silver Spring, Md.