I’m going to put some things in print some may consider impolite or imprudent. Perhaps so. Here we go.
The purpose of a Baptist institution is to point people to Jesus.
Far too many Baptist institutions are about self-preservation.
We need to be about the point of our existence.
Pointing fingers
By “Baptist institution,” I’m referring to the tens of thousands of churches Baptists have started, as well as the schools, hospitals, disaster relief and other human welfare agencies, mission agencies, conventions, associations, financial institutions and publishing houses created by Baptists over the last two centuries and more.
By “point people to Jesus,” I mean people interacting with our institutions should be closer to Jesus because of us. There are seemingly endless ways we can point people to Jesus.
By “about self-preservation,” I mean we’re more anxious about threats to our existence than we are about developing disciples of Jesus Christ. If you think I’m wrong, you haven’t been to our business meetings.
Every Baptist institution needs to take a hard look at what it’s about. What we spend our time and money doing, and what we exert the most energy over in our meetings will make clear what we’re really about, no matter what we may tell people.
Bottom-line reason for being
Every Baptist institution exists at the Lord’s pleasure, not our own pleasure or the pleasure of any other person or group of people. We are not entitled to existence, no matter how long we’ve been around or how influential we’ve been or are. No matter what life support we may be on, we will cease to exist when the Lord decides.
We exist to serve Jesus and to do as he commanded us. Jesus’ commands can be fleshed out through us in seemingly endless ways. So, we need to continually seek his direction for our institutions to be sure we are doing what he commands us to do.
All too easily, though, we turn more and more to self-preservation, baptizing each turn as the Lord’s will for our institution, washing it in Christian language, until we are serving the institution’s survival and not the Lord of our institution. That’s called idolatry.
The first wrong turn may have happened at our beginning, as a look at incorporation documents might show.
Full article.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This article was written by Eric Black and originally published by the Baptist Standard.
