I wonder why you became a Baptist?

Maybe you never did: perhaps you’re a cradle Baptist, or you just found yourself once in a church with a Baptist Union of Great Britain (BUGB) logo on the front, or perhaps you’d first reach for words like “Bible believing”, “liberal evangelical” or “charismatic” to describe your church tradition?

You wouldn’t be alone. Our wider Baptist identity has become a bit of an optional extra, as Simon already put it: the “Baptist label was ok, but inconsequential”.  Recently all first year ministerial students were invited to attend Baptist House (the national BUGB resource centre) for a conference where there was a Q&A with the General Secretary. Neatly sidestepping a difficult question about the Baptist position on something, Jonathan Edwards replied “there isn’t the Baptist church in Britain, there is only a family of Baptist churches within Britain”.

Risking the wrath of Baptist House when this is published, I have to say, I disagree.

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Many years ago a teenage Anglican moved to the other end of town and stopped going to church (her parents weren’t Christians). A friend took her to the badminton club at a local church, and then to summer camp. She thought: ‘if I am going on a trip with them I had better go to church.

She discovered amazing people who didn’t care that her parents weren’t Christians, loved and cared for her, and celebrated when she was baptised.  Two practices attracted her to this new denomination: firstly, believers’ baptism and secondly, the church meeting (I know!). The belief that Christians were ‘equal’ and covenanted together to support one another, discerning God’s will together as a gathered people made sense to me even at 16.

I stayed there for many decades, till called into ministry, and remain a committed Baptist for the very same reasons.  I recognise the potential of the church meeting, and want to transform the ‘board meeting’ model into community gathering.  I believe that communication, mutual accountability, and support are essential in the community of the church.

Imagine it is 2412, and we are a group of researchers asked to contribute to a data pod which is to be sent to Betelgeuse. We are commissioned to focus on the last 400 years, with special emphasis on the people called Baptist. What would we hope to discover, and how might those hopes for the future feed into our discussions now?

We would note that there used to be an organisation called the Baptist Union of Great Britain that supported churches in the complexities of C20 society, and took the flack when things went wrong. These dedicated people worked from a place called Didcot, now lost in the Oxon Metropolis.
This organisation ended in 2060, when Universal Simplification made its services redundant. But by then it had created a culture of such mutual encouragement and concern that its work continued in new forms.

We might find ourselves recording the final disappearance of traditional church in the hyper-individualism of the late 21Century, and the Long Silence of C22 when, without the discipline and support of a Christian community, the Way was almost lost, surviving only in those places where remoteness, urban dislocation or the harshness of the environment kept a sense of mutual commitment alive.

Reflecting beyond 400 years of Baptist history and ministry, I wonder what the Baptist family can do to make a definite contribution to the advancement of God’s kingdom in this generation and beyond. Here are a few of my thoughts.

Firstly we need to recover our confidence in the gospel of Jesus Christ and in proclamation evangelism. Secondly we need to develop a dynamic gospel lifestyle that authenticates our message. Baptist forerunners were people who defended the freedom to preach the gospel with their lives, because they were confident that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only means of securing salvation for humankind. Some demonstrated their confidence for the gospel in such a captivating manner that they defied the tyrant decrees of kings and queens and passionately sought freedom to proclaim the gospel and live the gospel. My recent observation is that many Baptist Christians and churches have lost confidence in the power of the proclaimed gospel as a divine medium of rescuing depraved humankind from the ravages of sin. We have to recapture that priced confidence in the integrity of God’s character and faithfulness to His word. Paul wrote in Romans 1.16 “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ because it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes... “. Also we need to be confident in God’s promise to back up the claims and demands of the gospel as we boldly proclaim it. Mark 16.20 states that, “they went out and preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs”. Recently I have known first hand the convicting power of the Holy Spirit melting the hardened hearts of sinners as I boldly proclaimed the way of salvation. Many people have responded to the grace of God and committed their lives to Jesus Christ with a dramatic turnaround. I believe God will do much more when His people confidently declare that Jesus is the only way to come to the Father.