Baptist Times

The news that the Baptist Times is to be published no more after 2011 struck me is a similar way to that described by Catriona Gorton; I'm somehow sadder than I expect to be.  Steve Holmes has written a good blog on why it probably matters.

The Baptist Times has not played a large part in my life.  Apart from a supplement where our Church was featured my only appearance in the paper was for one of my inductions to a Pastorate: a couple of weeks later a more famous Baptist minister (also called John Roberts) arranged for a rebuttal to assure his friends that he had not, in fact, been called to the church that I'd been called to!

Oh, and when I was a student I had a letter published too.  It was about the ecumenical movement and somebody took it and turned it into a pamphlet which was my introduction to the fact that once your words are out there you have little control over them - a helpful lesson ahead of blogging!

The predominant effect of the Baptist Times over the years has been to irritate me.  So, true to form, before I read the announcement of its closure (I never read papers and magazines from front to back and the announcement was near the front), it irritated me again.

Often it is the pretentious letters (and that happened again) but there was also the editorial.  This was mocking refreshments after services and (of course) the length of sermons.  The editorial was headed 'First Impressions' and was alluding to the woeful ones that Baptist Churches allegedly give.  But you know what?  Scarcely ever - in any of the churches I've served - have I heard first-time or relatively new  unchurched people complain about the refreshments (which is unsurprising if you've visited a hospital, travelled on a train or sat in an airport lately).  More astonishingly they scarcely ever complain about the length of services or even sermons.  No, the complaints - if they come at all - come from people who have been going to church for years (and frequently on behalf of their growing children who are in the process of deciding that the Christian faith may not be for them.  I think we Christian parents have to accept that the coffee is unlikely to be the major factor there . . .)

I wouldn't greatly respect these potshots on any week but they had a special irony on a week when the paper itself was seen to be a failed enterprise after 156 years.  Statistically the fall in BT circulation is catastrophic compared to the decline in Baptist Churches.  Maybe if they'd offered coffee/biscuit vouchers and free sermon DVDs . . .