Celebrants mark 175 years of freedom and friendship

From staff reports

GREENVILLE - About 175 people gathered to celebrate 175 years of Baptist State Convention (BSC) life at The Memorial Baptist Church in Greenville May 17. The worship service followed a one-day meeting of the BSC Board of Directors, which gathered in Greenville to mark the occasion.

Freedom and friendship

Ray Howell, pastor of First Baptist Church in Lexington, brought the anniversary message.

"Memory is the beginning of faith," Howell said, citing three biblical stories in which faith was awakened through a call to remembrance.

Although the first recorded proposal for a unified effort among the Baptist churches of North Carolina came in 1809, when Martin Ross raised the issue at the Chowan Baptist Association, the convention did not form for another 21 years. Early Baptists were hesitant about forming a state convention, Howell said, because they were fiercely independent. Some had been active in the movement toward gaining independence from England, facing oppression and even death at the hands of royal governor William Tryon, Howell said.

Knowing N.C. Baptists' love of freedom, Ross and others commissioned Thomas Meredith to write a letter to be circulated among 272 Baptist churches, explaining how the churches could retain their freedom while participating in a united mission.

North Carolina Baptists remain fiercely independent, Howell said, but have also learned to be cooperative in fulfilling the Great Commission by willingly and joyfully uniting to share resources with others who have the same calling and commitment.

"It's okay to be different. Dissent and debate are a part of our Baptist birthright, and North Carolina Baptists have had some memorable debates," Howell said.

"We can be free and still be friends," Howell said. "Freedom and friendship are the two rails upon which the Baptist train runs toward mission and ministry. That is the genius of the Baptist way.

"When we share the same goals of mission and ministry and work together toward those common goals, we are true Baptists. Freedom is our birthright and cooperation is our inheritance."

Howell said Shubal Stearns, who founded the Sandy Creek Association, and John Gano, founder of Jersey Baptist Church, became friends even though Stearns was a Separate Baptist and Gano was a Regular, or Particular Baptist.

When Stearns invited Gano to preach at the Sandy Creek Association, he was not well received at first, but as Gano began to quote scripture, "a miracle took place that day - the miracle of unity that only the Spirit of Christ can bring," Howell said.

Separate and Particular Baptists did not experience agreement in doctrine, but they learned to experience unity in the Spirit of Christ, he said.

"We will not find unity in doctrine or biblical interpretation," Howell said. "The unity we seek is not a unity of conformity, but a unity of identity. We are the family of God, brothers and sisters in Christ, born of the spirit and called to be ministers of reconciliation in a broken world."

History and heritage

Former executive director Roy Smith reviewed the early history of Baptists in North Carolina, and the convergence of factors leading to the formation of the BSC in 1830. With the promise of religious freedom, Baptists began coming into eastern North Carolina in the mid-1600s, Smith said, but there was no organized Baptist work and growth was haphazard. The first Baptist churches, Chowan and Shiloh, were founded about 1727.

Two Baptist pioneers played significant roles in Baptist growth, Smith said. Both John Gano, a Regular Baptist, and Shubal Stearns, a Separate Baptist, first came to the state in 1755. Gano founded Jersey Baptist Church near Lexington, "which became the mother and grandmother of dozens of churches in the upper piedmont."

Stearns and his family arrived at Sandy Creek, in Randolph County, that same year. He started the Sandy Creek Baptist Church, and within 17 years the church had fostered 42 churches and sent out 125 preachers.

"Although radically different in style and persuasion," Smith said Gano and Stearns affirmed each other "and recognized that diversity was no barrier to cooperation and fellowship."

Baptist associations began to form and grow in influence during the late 1700's, and Martin Ross, whom Smith called "the father of North Carolina missions and the Baptist State Convention," began to press the Kehukee association to promote missionary work. Most churches in the Kehukee association had become "anti-missionary," however, and the proposal accomplished little.

Ross and other pro-mission churches withdrew to form the Chowan Association in 1806, and organized to promote missionary work. In 1826, Ross introduced a motion calling for the association to form a state convention. With the assistance of Thomas Meredith, Samuel Wait and John Armstrong, all pastors and leaders in the North Carolina Baptist Benevolent Society, the Baptist State Convention was formed with 14 people present in 1830.

"North Carolina Baptists have a history and heritage that is almost beyond description," Smith said. "From diversity and the poverty of mind and spirit has come a people united in the cause of missions, education and evangelism that has blessed the world. May it ever be so."

Education and missions

Video presentations featured Norman Wiggins, former president and now chancellor of Campbell University, Tony Cartledge, editor of the Biblical Recorder, and Jim Griffith, former executive director of the Georgia Baptist Convention.

Wiggins spoke about the place of Baptist institutions throughout BSC's life. Facilitating the education of ministers was one of the primary reasons the convention was founded, but that desire broadened to educate people in other areas, as well. Better education led to other ministry efforts and the formation of other institutions such as an orphanage, which grew to become N.C. Baptist Children's Homes, Wiggins said.

Cartledge said the Biblical Recorder has functioned from the early days of the convention to provide an essential channel of communication and information for Baptists across the state. With effective use of the Internet, the Recorder now reaches more people than ever, he said.

Griffith discussed the position of state executive director in BSC life. Executive directors must remember that churches are autonomous, he said, and that state conventions must also remember that they are autonomous. One of the things that made North Carolina Baptists great was they knew how to disagree without being disagreeable, Griffith said. That tendency is decreasing, as many Baptists show less interest in the convention, he said. "In the future, we must remember the great power and strength of including people rather than excluding people: the great churches are those in which everyone feels a part, and the same thing applies to a convention. When people feel a part of it, they will give their very best to it."

John Tagliarini, pastor of First Baptist Church in Bryson City, led the congregation in a selection of "Music through the Decades," ranging from shaped notes to traditional hymns to praise choruses.

Concluding the meeting, executive director Jim Royston praised the ability of North Carolina Baptists to work together and not be exclusive. "Nothing would make me feel worse than to see that cease," he said. "We would not plant nearly as many churches or have the fellowship we do, because we wouldn't be together."

"I ask you one question tonight," he said, "where are the Martin Rosses, John Ganos, Thomas Merediths, Shubal Stearnses, Samuel Waits and John Armstrongs of today? I pray we will not only recognize them, but welcome them to our fellowship."