I’m not a Doctor Who geek! However a little while ago there was a particular evil monster who swallowed people. Their faces then appeared on the body of the monster. So when contemplating destroying it, you were confronted with friends and loved ones who now seemed to be a part of this evil manifestation.  

Well, it’s a bit strong to liken the present situation we face as Baptist followers of Jesus as seeking to destroy this ‘monster’, …or is it? Why is it that something that holds such a lot of good, with valued friends and much I believe in, can also feel like a massive boil that needs lancing! It sucks up our energy and resources keeping it going. It silences the voices of so many. At its worst, it hurts people and leaves them scarred by its rejection or closed doors. As if some aren’t even good enough for the monster to eat!

If Pat Took should prove to be prophetic in her whimsical contribution, if BUGB should cease to exist by 2060 through processes of simplification, radical individualism, or (and perhaps as likely) through the creeping dilution of post-denominationalism, then I am left pondering what l would most miss (though I doubt that either Pat or I will be missing much in 48 years time).

Those who know me might predict my longing to be for a series of historic but threatened theological distinctives – but they would be mistaken. That which I would most miss of our Union, or, more positively, that which presently I most treasure, would be the friendships that have nourished me, challenged me, and held on to me with extraordinary faithfulness and generosity. Some Restorationist streams trumpet a commitment to building relationally but my experience of personal crisis witnesses that our Baptist family promises less but delivers more.

But maybe friendship, an often neglected virtue, is itself for us a theological notion, a covenant relatedness that is ordered to the promise of a sacramental presence? If the Church in Europe is succumbing again to an age of darkness we should recall that monastic communities enabled our survival and even our flourishing through the Dark Ages of the past and, at root, monasticism is disciplined and intentional friendship. It is significant that several early Anabaptist leaders were formerly monks, desiring that same intentionality of covenant friendship for every gathering of true disciples.