For the most part, I love parties. I'm not talking about political parties. I'd rather not think about those for a while.
No, I'm talking about the kind of parties that feature ice cream and cake. And presents. That's why I love birthdays. Anybody's but mine.
Birthdays are important for the parties! But they are also important as markers. They cause us to take stock. To see how far we've come. I know of parents who, each birthday, marked their children's growth by making a mark on a door. By doing this, the gauge of their children's progress was always before them.
Jim White
As Baptists begin our year-long birthday celebration, we will have ample opportunity to party. Since we are Baptists, we can be certain food will be involved. Plenty of ice cream and cake, no doubt. But we will also take stock. To see how far we've come.
For a long time Baptists have been good at marking our growth. We report it and chart it. We mark it on the doors, so to speak. We expect it. And, until recently we've not been disappointed.
In the four centuries we've been around we've grown to our current global size of more than 50 million. But if we merely congratulate ourselves on growing large, we will have missed the more important reasons to celebrate.
Sure, growth is important, but more important is the reason for our growth. From the beginning, Baptists have taken seriously the biblical mandates. The Great Commission, for example: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.”
Baptists have been into disciple-making not for the sake of getting big but because Jesus told us to and because the lost needed to become disciples. So, to paraphrase the words of a great hymn, we gave of our sons (and daughters) to bear the message glorious, and gave of our wealth to speed them on their way. And we poured out our souls for them in prayer victorious. And in the process, developed the greatest evangelical missionary force the world has ever seen.
We were a people with a mission, on a mission. That mission defined us. It motivated us. It inspired and encouraged us.
The marks charting our growth have not only recorded our size, but our biblical faithfulness to evangelize.
As we pause in our 400th year to look back we see other evidences of biblical fidelity. Baptists saw those who were sick and we built hospitals. Baptists built schools and colleges where there were none to teach truth. In the kingdom of Jordan, a Muslim nation, two Baptist schools have gained high praise. In fact, the Baptist school in Amman boasts having Queen Noor's children as alumni.
When parents died, Baptists started orphanages to care for children — consider those Virginia Baptists are supporting in India — and when people reached old age without the means of caring for themselves, Baptists started homes for the aged. Through the centuries, in response to changing human needs, Baptists were there being the heart and hands of Christ. Soup kitchens in Hell's Kitchen, homeless shelters in any major city, food pantries and countless clothes closets speak to Baptists' commitment to meet the physical needs of our fellow human beings in the name of Jesus.
We didn't always get it right, of course. Occasionally our history is speckled with instances when we were more concerned with guarding the way things were than in guiding them to how they should be. At points, some white Baptists saw nothing wrong with enslaving black Baptists or depriving them of the right to vote. Those days are long gone, of course, but the lessons are not. Those Baptists missed the calling of Christ to champion the way things should be. May we never again be so short-sighted. A look back will reveal a people who in their imperfection were recipients of God's grace. If we could see ahead, my prediction is we would still see people in need of God's grace.
And what of the present? Things have changed, to be sure. There aren't so many orphans here at home as there used to be, so our “orphanages” have shifted their emphasis to foster care and the intervention in a host of other family crisis points.
Old age homes have evolved due to governmental regulation and changing social needs to provide retirement options for older adults — still in the name of Christ.
In our age of public education, community colleges and easy access to advanced academic opportunities, the educational void that Baptists once filled is not as great as it once was. Still, Bluefield College and Virginia Intermont College are proud to be known as Baptist institutions. So are Fork Union and Hargrave Military academies and Oak Hill Academy, a secondary school of distinction. And Virginia Baptists are proud to be related to them and to support their missions of teaching their students to observe whatsoever Christ has commanded us.
Let a nature-induced crisis occur and Baptists pull out all the stops. Before the storms subside, Baptists are on their way to the epicenter of the hurt with help. Virginia Baptists are still journeying in groups to the gulf coast to rebuild homes and churches following Hurricane Katrina.
We have much to celebrate. But there are danger signs to observe lest we bask too long in the glow of the 400 candles on our birthday cake. Almost without exception, at some ill-defined but indisputable point, organizations begin to shift their foci from mission to preservation. Consequently, they begin to diminish in influence.
Fortunate ones realize their mistakes and apply their energies and resources once again to their missions. They dismiss inconsequential past differences and in a united effort they discover new ways to be successful and gain new influence.
Those who are not so fortunate continue to talk about the good old days and seek to recapture bye-gone glory. They repeat old strategies that worked in the past. They begin to assign blame and call names.
Preservation mentality presents itself in different forms. Sometimes it is mislabeled “conservatism.”