This is the second in a BNG series of articles on Christianity and democracy that will lead toward the July 4 celebration of America’s 250th birthday. The series has been curated by Carol McEntyre, senior minister at First Baptist Church of Greenville, S.C.
That first night over lagers and pepperoni, our conversation turned to the church.
I was serving as minister to young adults at Highland Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., in the early 2010s. We were building the young adult ministry plane as we flew it in those days. My beloved companions were the church’s original group of a dozen young adults — generous in their energies and visionary in their imagination.
Our first fall together, we decided to go on retreat, gathering at a working monastery and seminary called St. Meinrad’s just an hour from Louisville. (Added bonus that they served beer and pizza on Friday nights!) That’s where we were — St. Meinrad’s campus pub — mere hours into the weekend, when the frustrations about the church began to flow: The pace of change; the gaps in our public witness; the sense that, unless you’d been around for decades, no one really cared that much about your opinions; the fact that none of them were serving on the important committees; you name it.
Emily Hull McGee
I listened for a while — still learning all the dynamics — and then asked gently, “Did any of you say yes when you were asked to serve?”
Silence. Side glances.
“Do you, you know, go to church business meetings?”
I remember an, “Ugh, not a chance.”
“Do you say yes when Kathy asks you to read Scripture in worship?”
A chuckle.
“Do you see how many introverts you have sitting with you right now?”
I grinned and had a hunch this next question might land.
“Well, how are you going to help your church become the church you hope it can be if you’re just sitting on the sidelines and refusing to participate in the process?”
“How are you going to help your church become the church you hope it can be if you’re just sitting on the sidelines and refusing to participate in the process?”
It was the last time this wise, creative, dynamic bunch of leaders sat out of the process to make better the church they so loved. A couple years later, every single one was leading: elected as deacons and representatives on the Ministry Council, teaching Sunday school, serving on search committees, offering stewardship testimonies in worship. One even volunteered to serve on the Bylaw Revision Task Force, for God’s sake! (And then promptly made the whole group “I survived the Bylaw Revision Task Force of 2013” T-shirts.)
Their perspective that night at the pub had reflected my own, when years prior I relished any opportunity to rail against “the church” from a safe distance away. It was only with transformative invitations to humility and involvement that my rousing participation on the outside transformed into hopeful leadership on the inside. I became a convert in the way of institutional renewal.
But our experience isn’t unique. Studies have shown us for years just how precipitous is the fall of people away from organized communities of faith, many for good reason.
Church can be full of bureaucracy and resistance and laborious business meetings at best, unjust exclusion and abuses of power and a failure of imagination at worst. It’s no wonder millions want no part in it.
So too is it with our democracy. More than 154 million people voted in the 2024 election, which seems like a staggering number until you level it against the 342 million citizens of the United States (huge!), or the number of voters who engage in the work of democracy in their local communities between elections (tiny!). As President Jed Bartlett from The West Wing once said, “Decisions are made by those who show up.”
Among the greatest gifts our Baptist identity offers to churches is just that: The chance to show up and shape the life of the community. Baptist churches form their own governance, call their own pastors, build their own budgets, choose their own ministries and live out the shape of their obedience to God, often in great contrast to another Baptist church down the road. Each member’s voice shapes the greater whole and holds the potential to deepen our faithfulness and sharpen our witness.
In the words of my granddaddy Bill Hull, our Baptist religious tradition unfolds as “a reality to be experienced rather than a ritual to be enacted, as in Catholicism; a doctrine to be affirmed, as in Protestantism; or an ethic to be observed, as in Judaism.”
From this experience flows our commitments to believer’s baptism and a believers’ church, and those four fragile freedoms of soul, Bible, church and religion. Uncoerced and storied no matter its landscape, the Baptist experience is one of deep engagement.
If experience begets engagement, engagement demands compromise. You may not agree with how the House and Grounds Committee spends their landscaping budget this year, or what activities the youth group chooses to do, but I bet you love your church and desire for its flourishing. Out of that love, you may choose to let these differences be, or even to dissent (as any good Baptist should).
“The work of the people within our democracy rhymes with the work of the people in our Baptist churches.”
Our polity suggests this isn’t only permissible, it’s encouraged. But no matter the response, you choose to show up, trusting the work we do together matters far more than any one opinion, no matter how cherished.
Indeed, the church we hope for is the church we work for. Baptist churches become a co-creation with God and a work of our people, a lived liturgy fashioned through our “yes” to serve and lead and give and show up in the way of Jesus, even — especially! — when inconvenient or hard.
When each new member joins the beloved community of First Baptist on Fifth, our greeting begins right there: “Come lead us.” Together with God, come lead us to be more faithful, more kind, more just, more generous, more loving, more hopeful, more brave.
From new babies to seniors and every one of us in between, each member leads and shapes us into the church God dreams us to be. It is freedom and responsibility, of course, but gift most of all.
Although our Constitution of the United States of America does not unite us under “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” as does our church, the work of the people within our democracy rhymes with the work of the people in our Baptist churches. From sea to shining sea, our engagement “in here” teaches us how to engage “out there.”
And in an age of distraction and despair in this 250th year, our democracy would be well-served by thoughtful Baptists bringing the good, practiced gifts of freedom and responsibility and co-creation to our shared American experiment.
Remember that brilliant bunch of young adults? They’re now middle-aged like me. Some have drifted from the church. (Churches, like democracies, are full of people, and people are messy and complicated.) Others from our group are still right at its heart, leading from the inside in their second decade now of church membership. Nearly all have funneled their passions into the work of advocacy and justice. One has even run for office.
But I daresay that night at the fall retreat called us all — me just as much as them — to get to the work in the ring, not to stand by as critics on the edge.
We might just be surprised at what unfolds. For who are we to hinder God?
Emily Hull McGee serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church on Fifth, Winston-Salem, N.C.
Discussion questions:
- How would you assess your congregation’s willingness to engage in the shared work of the church? What contextual factors might be contributing to those patterns of engagement?
- Think of a time when you engaged deeply in the work of the church and things went well. What made it so? What about when engagement went wrong? What can you learn from these successes and failures?
- Honoring our Baptist commitment of the separation of church and state, how might you and your church offer leadership to engage in the work of democracy as an act of faithfulness?
- Two of the biggest threats to our democracy are disengagement and despair. What does Christian hope look like when lived out in the public square?