Updated Friday, Feb. 08, 2008

Event reaches goal for unity

By Norman Jameson

BR Editor

Closing night at the New Baptist Covenant brought a family friend to tears.

We'd just heard a powerful sermon by Charles Adams from Detroit; a humble address from Bill Clinton urging us to be sensitive to those with whom we disagree because "we might all be wrong;" and then, a testimony from America's most famous Sunday school teacher, Jimmy Carter.

Carter told about his personal faith crisis in the mid-1960s. He was out of the Navy where he had been a nuclear physicist and already had lost a race for governor of Georgia. He called his sister, evangelist Ruth Carter Stapleton who lived in Fayetteville, N.C., and said he was losing his spiritual spark. She came and they talked and prayed together in Plains, Ga., and eventually Ruth asked him what he is doing in his faith that requires God. "Get out and do something," she urged him.

So Carter enlisted in a Pioneer Missions effort through the Southern Baptist Convention, in which he and another man visited 100 families in a Pennsylvania town who had indicated a willingness to consider becoming a part of a new church. They visited every family, kneeling in the street to pray before each visit, Carter said - a bold and humbling action.

Forty-eight persons believed on the name of Jesus that week, and Carter's faith stirred anew from witnessing the power of God. The next year he took another Pioneer Missions trip, this time working among Spanish-speaking families in Massachusetts, with a Cuban pastor who witnessed boldly and effectively.

At the end of the week, Carter asked his partner the secret of his boldness and effectiveness in sharing his faith. The Cuban pastor admitted his was a simple faith, explained in just two steps: Love God, and love the person standing in front of you.

That was ultimately the message from the New Baptist Covenant. Pre-conceived and unfounded notions kept Southern Baptists as a body away, but frankly, no one who wasn't there was missed. So many positive, energetic, diverse and committed Baptists were present it was all each of us could do to keep up with each other and the special interest seminars available. North Carolina Baptists were present, providing leadership in several special interest sessions, such as restorative justice, disaster relief and reaching out to the sick.

With 30 Baptist bodies represented among the 15,000 participants, there were plenty of pangs of conviction for personal and corporate failures for each of us to share the weight of our neglect of those who Jesus loves. As Adams said, Jesus is not "tied to a temple, nailed to a nation or riveted to a race."

Jesus launched his public ministry by quoting Isaiah, as recorded in the New Baptist Covenant theme verse, Luke 4:18-19, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

That was the operative verse for the New Baptist Covenant. No political agenda, just because the initiating force was a politician. No flag waving for any political party, neither those who work in Washington nor from some denominational seat.

In a nutshell, as is his mission and purpose, Anthony Campolo drew a simple contrast and asked if we think Jesus meant what He said about preaching good news to the poor, "or do you think He was kidding?"

Confronting the sin of materialism and America's consumer culture, Campolo asked if we thought Jesus would drive an $80,000 car while 30,000 children a day die in quiet despair and many older people have to choose between medicine and food.

He pointed to expensive church facilities and wondered aloud how church members could be challenged to give sacrificially when their own churches often model self-centered consumerism.

We're losing young people from church ranks because we are not challenging them. "We have not lost them because we are making Christianity too difficult for them but because we are making it too easy for them," he said. "They want their lives to count. They want their lives to matter."

Like Campolo, I believe young people want to be heroic. And old people want their lives to count in their last days. And middle aged people are awakening to realize one-third of their lives is ahead of them and no rut is too deep to climb out of and make a difference. It is not too late to receive the Spirit of God, poured out "on all people," as it says in Joel 2:28: "Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams; your young men will see visions."

It is good to have heroes. It is better to be heroic. The New Baptist Covenant was simply a place where earnest Christians caught a picture of the battlegrounds of justice where heroes are forged.