By Chris Hughes
There is power in stories, especially in ministry. Stories define us and help us navigate our way through times of change. Having hope for the future of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship means we remember our story and think of ways to tell a better story.
The 2012 CBF Task Force has hosted listening sessions to gather stories that can make CBF thrive. The 14-member team of clergy, professors and lay leaders is asking for our stories about why CBF is important and how the organization can better affirm its Baptist principles. In other words, “How can we tell a better Baptist story for the next 20 years?”
In many ways, the Fellowship was birthed as a dream for a better Baptist story – a new story that reflected historic ways of being Baptist. This new story paved the way for a Baptist body united around the idea that we could do more together than we could separately; that together we could tolerate a great deal of openness and that together we could welcome more and more people. This is the better Baptist story that all of us hope for in CBF, and it is one worth passing on to the children that come after us.
But even carefully told stories can venture off path. In 2000, the CBF Coordinating Council issued a policy statement for its national hiring and funding that many in this Baptist movement are having trouble reconciling. In short, the statement declared that CBF would not support the staff hiring or support as field personnel someone who is a “practicing homosexual.” (Read the entire statement here.)
It is time for us to be honest with ourselves about this issue. In our Fellowship, there are people at this very moment who are discovering their own sexual identity – an identity that may be challenged by this standard. There are churches in our Fellowship who welcome and affirm these individuals. And there are a growing number of people young and old whose consciences can no longer allow them to sit idly by while these churches and individuals are kept out of full participation in this Fellowship.
How can we hope to pass on this story if the creative, young people needed to tell it are all gone, either because they do not fit this standard or because conscience compels them to move on?
If CBF continues to uphold this policy, then we will have to face questions like, “What about the children who grow up in CBF churches that discover they are gay or lesbian?” “What happens when a gay or lesbian person senses a call to the mission field and considers CBF to be his or her home?” “Are churches that welcome and affirm gay and lesbian persons not allowed into full participation in CBF life?”
More importantly, CBF will have to face the growing number of people young and old who love Jesus and love people and want to share a story that carries us beyond this policy.
We do so much to make CBF a story worth sharing. We make it about openness and inclusion. We tolerate questions and differences of opinions. We focus on justice, peacemaking and racial reconciliation. We reach out in the name of Jesus and care for people’s livelihoods as well as their souls. We make CBF a better Baptist story worth passing on in many ways — save for this one policy.
So let’s stop saving it. Before this policy gets tucked away in the annals of “This is the way we’ve always done it,” let’s set our consciences free and rewrite this chapter. Before any more CBF children grow up and realize they are not entirely welcome here and before any more Jesus-and-people-loving Christians move on to another home, let’s tell our 2012 Task Force we need to remove this policy.
The 2012 Task Force is still accepting input through their online survey and will make recommendations to the Coordinating Council in February for improving the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
This is just one of several opportunities in the coming year where we have the chance to tell this new story through our Fellowship. Let’s tell it as loudly as we can, and let’s start telling it now.