I enjoy the Baptist Assembly. And I enjoyed the one that has just finished. Many thanks to those who worked hard to make it happen. Given that these are tense times of financial shortfall it was especially good that spiritual focus and Christian courtesy were maintained.
True, in Baptist Churches (and others) large and small I attend occasions that are more worshipful, more prayerful, more Biblical, more challenging, more comforting, more encouraging, more friendly, more inspiring or more valuable. Yet the general sense of the occasion is that the Lord Jesus is at the centre and the machinations of church structural life are at the margins and this is something that many a meeting of church groupings fails to achieve.
This year's Assembly was largely at Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, London. This produced a very different feel to the balmy seaside locations in far flung corners of England that the Assembly usually inhabits. The sound of police sirens replaced that of seagulls, strolls on the promenade gave way to escalators on the Underground and the proportion of white faces dropped in a minor version of the manner familiar to all who leave little English towns for a daring day trip to the Metropolis.
It was peciliar at times. One peculiarity, captured in the blog heading, is the strange way that the Baptists themselves became the audience in their own Assembly. This was not universally true but was a marked feature of the final gathering. The Baptist Union has shrunk of course since its Edwardian heyday and indeed its current project is to attempt to shrink some more (for financial reasons). But it still consists of thousands of churches, leaders and tens of thousands of Christians. Worldwide, Baptist Christians make up one of Christianity's more populous and dynamic branches. Yet assembling British Baptists ended their Assembly at a location and with a worship leader and a speaker all from different expressions of the church.
I'm not sure what I think about this. (I'm a lot surer about what I think of the second peculiarity but I'll come on to that another day when I've calmed down). My instincts, like that of most Baptist Christians in the UK, are not very denominational (see earlier post). Surely, though, Baptists have in their worldwide ranks some people who can lead worship at the three evening meetings as helpfully as the guy who did so. Yes, I know he went to the Royal College of Music but so does the pianist in our Church Youth band. Nothing wrong with what he did, but little variance from soft rock convention-style fare (well, perhaps that was what was wrong with it . . .). The speaker was a national figure of considerable warmth and import but his visiting courtesy probably rendered him far less prophetic than he would have been to his own church grouping if it was in the same state that we are.
Perhaps the difference between visiting artistes and family members is that the artiste performs on the night but a family member behaves with an eye on the next morning. The worship leader artiste imagines the next conference not next Sunday in Bloglington Baptist Church; the artiste speaker imagines ecumenical networking not Bloglington BC's (and the Blogshire Association's) inadequacies inherited, incoming or self-inflicted. Is this why the family counsellor will always make it their goal to get a troubled family talking to itself rather than listening to their outside input?
One connected observation. If our speaker, worship leader or the Central Hall itself wish to become recognised as Baptist ministries (and no, I don't think this is likely!) they may yet be surprised at the paperwork, committee work, and possible rejection this would entail for them. I think there is irony in that somewhere.
One of my problems has always been that, even when I'm enjoying myself, I think too much.
No comments:
Post a Comment