Young pastors encourage CBF supporters to ‘Embrace the World’

Pastor Julie Merritt delivers a theme interpretation July 2 at the CBF General Assembly in Houston. (CBF photo)

HOUSTON (ABP) — Attendees to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly heard a visceral call to embrace the world — and all their neighbors — in worship July 2.

About 2,000 attendees and guests on the first night of the group’s annual meeting, gathering in Houston, participated in a multicultural worship service focused on the story of the Good Samaritan found in Luke 10. It featured an African-American choir, a largely Anglo praise team singing worship songs written by a Latino composer, two young pastors meditating on the text and the “Embrace the World — Welcome to Your Neighborhood” theme and an exploration of the ways CBF partners are implementing the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals.

“The question, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ is really the question of, ‘Who isn’t my neighbor?’” said Taylor Sandlin, pastor of Southland Baptist Church in San Angelo, Texas, discussing the young lawyer to whom Jesus related the Good Samaritan story.

“The young man basically wanted to know, ‘Where does my neighborhood end?’ Where is that line that separates us from them? What distinguishes those for whom I am responsible from those for whom I am not?’” Sandlin continued.

“Who is a neighbor in God’s kingdom? Remarkably, not the ones with the best theology. Not the ones with the best answers,” he concluded. “No, the one who shared the same ZIP code as the Almighty, according to Jesus, was the one who shared in the Lord’s compassion for the wounded man. Even the lawyer could see that. The question remains, though: Did he go and do likewise? I wonder: Will we?”

A video presentation described the ways CBF is working to meet the Millennium goals, the worldwide effort to end by 2015 poverty and its tragic side effects by combating the root causes of poverty.

Julie Merritt, pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Hendersonville, N.C., said loving and serving one’s neighbors is not merely a matter of loving and serving humanity, but loving and serving humans.

“What Jesus is calling us to is living with and among people who are different from us — actually getting to know them and their needs,” she said.

“In short, we are to love in particular and not in general. Loving in general is abstract and located in our mind, but loving in particular is specific and located in our hands and in our heart. We don’t just feed ‘the hungry,’ but we shake hands with someone who is hungry, sit down with him, share a meal together, share a conversation and thus share a holy space,” she continued.

“Even if we meet every Millennium Development Goal and have not love — have not relationship — we have nothing.”

At the end of the service, the Fellowship collected the $9,848.04 for the fifth annual Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Offering for Religious Liberty and Human Rights. The award — named in honor of the former president and first lady, who are CBF supporters — funds ministries and initiatives that promote religious freedom and other human rights around the world.

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Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.