Our Global Baptist Family in Three Clicks
by Doyle Sager
Churchnet Board Member & Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church, Jefferson City
At the recent annual gathering of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) in Vancouver July 4-8, I learned that Christ's Church is truly international. One of the gathering's participants from New Zealand told an immigration official, "I am just three clicks away from helping resettle a refugee." That boast was put to the test when the New Zealander was asked to intervene on behalf of a refugee needing resettlement. He emailed the BWA office (click one) who contacted a person in the specific BWA region (click two) who contacted refugee and resettlement workers in the area (click three). The immigration official was amazed! Three clicks!
Besides this "three-click" lesson, here are some other takeaways from the BWA Gathering: I learned we don't have it so bad after all. For all of our fretting in the USA about economic downturns, and despite all our fulminating about the loss of Christian privilege, we live on easy street compared to the global church. A friend from Zimbabwe reported an 89% unemployment rate in his country. He also reported that there is suppression of dissent. When people speak up, they mysteriously disappear.
I learned that most of us wear cultural blinders. That is, we view history and current events from our tiny knot hole and limited life experience. One evening, First Baptist Church of Vancouver hosted the BWA and we listened to Cheryl Bear, who is a First Nation recording artist and storyteller (First Nation is the moniker used in Canada for Native Americans). She pointed out that white people begin telling American history with the arrival of our ships. But First Nation people were already here, with a history of their own to tell, if we had been listening. She declared, "We were here on this land, borrowing it from the Creator for centuries from time immemorial." She continued by explaining that when the ships arrived, the white people assumed the indigenous population had no political structure and no God. They were wrong!
Perhaps our understanding of contextualized missions has come a long way since our forebears arrived on the shores of this continent, but a little humility is always good. Getting out of our own zip code once in a while can be eye-opening.
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The Churchnet crew in Vancouver (from left): Brian Kaylor,
Forestal Lawton, Jim Hill, Doyle Sager (photo by our waitress).