BIRMINGHAM, England (ABP) — Christ's love commands compassion for a world filled with suffering and pain, speaker after speaker told participants at the Baptist World Centenary Congress.
The Baptist World Alliance set aside an evening of its 100th anniversary celebration in Birmingham, England, to look beyond itself and examine the spiritual and physical needs of people around the globe.
A central element of that challenge, according to keynote speaker Myra Blyth, is for Baptists to explain how Jesus' resurrection and life translates into good news for people, both as they live their lives and as they consider eternity.
The world is increasingly narcissistic and self-centered, suggested Blyth, a lecturer in worship and ecumenical studies at Regents Park College, the Baptist component of Oxford College in the United Kingdom.
And some critics claim Jesus was narcissistic, too, pointing to his series of “I am” statements in the Gospel of John, she conceded, noting how Jesus said, “I am …” and finished the phrase with such terms as the “Door,” “Bread of Life,” “True Vine,” “Way” and “Alpha and Omega.”
To the contrary, John's snapshots of Jesus reveal his selfless willingness to follow God's plan and his unselfish concern for humanity, she said.
“Jesus' journey to the cross was no ego trip, but an outward journey pointing (people) to the one who sent him,” she insisted. “God's self-giving nature (in Jesus) is the very opposite of self-centeredness” because he pointed people to Christ.
And Jesus' “I am” self-descriptions have implications for Christians today, she said, adding: “We must take seriously what it means to be made in the image of God. … It is not pointing inward but pointing out. … The world needs redemption.”
To illustrate, Blyth focused on Jesus' last “I am” description — “I am the Resurrection and the Life” — which he said to his friend Martha just before he raised her brother, Lazarus, from the dead.
Martha had trouble understanding what Jesus said “not as a future event, but in the here and now,” Blyth explained. Martha could accept that Jesus could bring her brother back to life at the end of time, but she couldn't grasp that what Jesus said could be good news for her in the next few moments.
But Jesus' compassion for people means his action in their lives is good news in the moment as well as in eternity, Blyth noted.
“Our calling is to be Easter people in a Good Friday world,” helping people to enjoy Christ's blessings in their lives today as well as to trust in his promise of life in eternity, she said.
As such, Christians have an important message about Jesus, she insisted: “Life is stronger than death. Goodness is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate.”
In a variety of ways, speakers pointed to practical and spiritual implications of Christian compassion for the whole world:
— Through Baptist World Aid, the BWA's relief arm, Baptists “meet people at the time of their greatest need,” reported Paul Montacute, Baptist World Aid director.
He recounted stories of how the BWA has ministered to victims of a volcano in Angola and the Congo, orphans and the ill in North Korea and survivors of the tsunami in Sri Lanka.
“One of the issues for Baptists is: How can we present a holistic gospel?” Montacute told the crowd. People need the gospel, but they also have physical needs that demand Christian response, he explained.
Baptists must not forget the “silent tsunamis” of poverty and hunger and disease that take lives around the globe every day, he urged.
“People are impoverished, not just one day a year (like a tsunami), but 365 days a year,” he said. Through Baptist World Aid, the alliance provides care in Jesus' name to people, regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion or geography.
— Baptist women in Latin America have followed their spiritual compassion and worked to rescue families from violence throughout the region, said Amparo de Medina of Colombia, a BWA vice president from 2000 to 2005.
The movement began as a meeting of 120 Baptist women in Panama in 2000, she recounted. Since then, many television and radio stations, as well as newspapers and magazines, have promoted the campaign to stop violence in families, both in Latin America and the United States.
“I have seen the hand of God working,” she said. “Women of Latin America have broken the silence. Baptists, who are known for their defense of human rights, cannot be silent. … There is no peace without justice.”
— In Eastern Europe, Christian compassion for Marxists and communists is making a difference in their lives, noted seminary professor Parush Parushev, a former communist.
“Marxist socialism intellectually is very logical, but it is ethically deficient,” said Parushev, academic dean at the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague, Czech Republic.
However, the “holistic presence of God in lives” changes people like him, he said. “Communism lacks a moral dimension. Reason can give you law, but there is something beyond law — grace and compassion,” which only Christ can offer.
— Because they have compassion on the people who live in their part of the world, Latin American Baptists are strategizing to start an unprecedented number of churches, said Alberto Prokopchuk, the BWA's regional secretary for Latin America.
Noting less than 1 percent of the population is Baptist and millions have no relationship with Christ, Prokopchuk said Baptists there sense a strong compulsion to “consolidate evangelization with the plantation of churches.”
New churches are needed to disciple new Christians, develop leaders and impact communities,” he said, announcing Baptists in Latin America hope to start 5,000 churches in the next 10 years.
“This vision should be a world vision for Baptists,” he said, inviting Baptists from elsewhere to help Latin Baptists in their endeavor and offering for Latin Baptists to go elsewhere to help other Baptists start churches.
BWA delegates gave voice to their conviction that compassion demands a practical response as they sang together: “Sent by the Lord am I / My hands are reaching now / To make the earth a place / in which the Kingdom comes.”