Tonight I attended an appreciation dinner catered – catered! – by a local Italian chain, in honor of the volunteers who decorated First Baptist for Christmas. It was neat to sit down with such a wide variety of people and think to myself about all the beeves I have with Baptists. For one thing, they're really firm on immersion and they won't baptize infants. (I remember when I was a child thinking that since they stubbornly refused to compromise on the first of those positions, the second followed on a more or less practical note.) They tend to love programs and get high marks on religiosity scales. Their churches are big. They dress up too much. They don't sing the historic hymns – traditional music, for them, means "The Old Rugged Cross."
But all that is more or less stereotype.
Some of those issues are important (whether or not baptism is a sacrament tends to fall in the important category), but some of them aren't. All of these points of contention (and others) have at some point kept me from fellowship with Baptist brothers and sisters, and have contributed to a sense of personal superiority. I, the Presbyterian, believe right things, eschew programs and poo-poo "modern developments" in the science of how to run a church, engage in culture and community like a good Kuyperian, attend small churches, and sing hymns with old German melodies... blah, blah, high horse, blah, blah, soapbox, blah, blah, blah. Yippee for me.
The thing that I'll take away from this evening was how welcoming these folks were – not just welcoming outsiders into their group, but welcoming people into their experience of (and passion for) God's kingdom. The main volunteer coordinator gave a short speech about how maybe people would see the lights and decorations and think that our church was warm and welcoming, how our efforts might make it easier for someone to come inside and meet Jesus. She talked about how grateful she was for all the people who pitched in, and how fun the whole experience had been.
Standard material, I guess, but the fact that we all felt so much like peers stood out to me. All of us, aged five to eighty-five, from all kinds of backgrounds, were eating together in an expression of thankfulness for one another and for being allowed to serve the Lord. Sounds corny to say, but there it is.
Equality among servants. Fellowship in thanksgiving. Love and respect.
How refreshing for someone who hasn't felt "at home" in awhile.
Posted by nickles at December 4, 2007 11:13 PM | TrackBack