BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (ABP) — Being near the right son, Virginia theologian John Kinney told participants of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's general assembly, can open doors for you.
Speaking June 24 during the opening session of the moderate Baptist group's annual meeting in Birmingham, Kinney noted that his son, Erron, is a tight end for the NFL's Tennessee Titans. When visiting his son in Nashville, Kinney said, he often gets into places or gets the sort of treatment that is not available to most people.
That's taught him something: “Some of the promise and possibility in your life is not because of who you are, but because you're connected with the right Son,” Kinney said.
Kinney is dean of the school of theology at Virginia Union University, a historically African-American Baptist school in Richmond. Addressing the meeting's theme of “Being the Presence of Christ: Today….Tomorrow….Together,” he drew from Luke's account of the disciples' encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus to note that being Christ's presence in the world first requires Christians to recognize Christ's presence among them.
That was difficult for the disciples in Luke 24:30-34, whose world had just been upended by the death of their leader, Kinney said.
“Could that day be much of the character of today?” he asked. “[There are] wars and rumors of wars, trouble at every hand.”
But, Kinney said, despite the disciples' dejected condition and inability at first to recognize their Lord in his resurrected state, “he still drew near.”
And as soon the disciples realized that Christ was sitting with them, he disappeared, Kinney said. That caused the disciples to realize that their hearts had been “burning within” them when Jesus was walking with them along the road, explaining the prophecies about his coming and resurrection.
“What was something I didn't know and could only hear facts about is now burning as a part of who I am,” Kinney said.
Once a believer is in close contact with Christ and feels in that relationship a burning passion, then they can be that presence in the world, Kinney said. He noted that the disciples immediately got up and returned to Jerusalem to tell the others of their experience.
“They do not respond with a doctrine or a formula. They do not come at you with a form to follow. They come at you with a life that has been transformed, and invite you to be transformed,” he said. “They tell you, there's something that has gotten a hold of me, and my life has been changed!”
About 2,800 participants also heard music from Baptist musician Kyle Matthews and a mass choir and orchestra composed of members of CBF-supportive churches from Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee.
Participants also took up a special offering of $33,495 earmarked for the Baptist World Alliance. In introducing the offering, CBF missionary Anita Snell noted the Southern Baptist Convention's recent decision to withdraw from the global confederation of Baptists — due at least in part to BWA's decision to accept CBF as a member body.
“This welcoming was a great sacrifice [for BWA], and it's time for us to say, 'Thank you.' Baptists of the world need to know we care,” Snell said. “Let's make our expression of gratitude loud and clear.”
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