ATLANTA (ABP) — The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship must transcend mere multiculturalism to become fully intercultural, CBF moderator Joy Yee told participants at the group's general assembly in Atlanta June 22.
The fellowship of traditional, progressive Baptists can be multicultural simply by gathering people representing various ethnicities, races, geographies, ages, genders and classes in the same place, noted Yee, but to be intercultural, it must dynamically involve each group with all the others, she explained.
Yee, senior pastor of 19th Avenue Baptist Church in San Francisco, embodies interculturalism. She is the first female senior pastor and first Chinese-American to lead the 15-year-old Atlanta-based CBF. She lives on the West Coast but is the highest elected leader of CBF, an organization primarily associated with the Southeast. And she is a relatively young mother leading a movement founded by the preceding generation.
Yee's keynote address to the general assembly echoed a document she promoted that was approved two days earlier by the CBF Coordinating Council, which leads the organization between its annual general assemblies.
“A Mandate for Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Coordinating Council” emphasizes the council's commitment to being intercultural. It affirms CBF's progress toward interculturalism, and it urges CBF to place a priority on creating an intercultural team of coordinators and staff.
The mandate also calls for partnership in intercultural groups and initiatives, and it urges individuals, churches and CBF partners “to set aside the differences that keep people apart, to build intercultural relationships, to … learn from one another and to celebrate the fellowship that God creates through reconciliation.”
Yee emphasized the validity and value of interculturalism in her address to the general assembly.
Preaching from the New Testament book of Acts, Yee focused on how God led the Apostle Peter to share the Christian gospel with Cornelius, a Roman army officer.
In that day, Jews such as Peter did not associate with Gentiles such as Cornelius, Yee said, noting Jews felt Gentiles were impure and thus unworthy of a relationship with God.
“How could Peter go against the grain of his religion?” she asked. “He was first of all open to the [Holy] Spirit's leadership, and Cornelius was too.”
Events such as that still happen, Yee said. “God is working his purposes in our world, and our first task is to be open to the Spirit's leadership. … This happens when we totally give up our own will and tell God, ‘I am totally open to what you are doing.'”
Peter did not receive full confirmation of his new conviction that Gentiles should receive the gospel until Cornelius responded favorably, Yee pointed out. “Affirmation comes in the midst of doing,” she observed.
For CBF, “affirmation comes in the midst of doing and not before,” she asserted. “I am encouraged by the work CBF does. … Barriers are being broken and diversity is being modeled as we seek to work interculturally.”
Under God's leadership, CBF is becoming intercultural — transcending ethnicity, class, geography, generation, gender, economics and other human barriers, she said.
“To be intercultural implies a mutual respect, communion and unity that does not demand uniformity,” she added. “When we are together, God brings all these cultures into a whole if we will let him.”
Yee illustrated her call for interculturalism by describing musical harmony.
“Producing beautiful music does not always mean we are singing the same notes or in chords that sound beautiful,” she said. “There is a different richness that comes from adding harmony.”
Sometimes, the harmony is dissonant — sounds that at first appear to clash, but which add richness and texture to the song, she reported.
“Together, we do not all sing the same melody,” Yee said of CBF's intercultural diversity. “But there are interesting and breathtaking harmonies. Even in dissonance, the song can be more beautiful (because it is) woven around and anchored upon the melody written by God.”
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