Scottish Baptist College

Graduation

Early in July our leaving students graduated at a University Graduation Service in Coats Memorial Baptist Church, Paisley. Four students graduated with Honours Degrees (two first class) and four with Graduate Diplomas (all with Distinction). Well done to all of them!

 

Towards a Vision for the Future

A note to say that I have now included Alan Donaldson's address 'Towards a Vision for the Future' on the earlier post about the Baptist Union of Scotland's recent Council meeting, Here. All three main sessions or input are, therefore, now available.

John Howard Yoder

Presently reading and loving this book by Mennonite scholar the late John Howard Yoder.

There are a number of theologians and writers who often come of age and their significance is recognised after their deaths. I think that Yoder is one such writer. I also think that his contributions (critically appropriated) could help Baptists understand something of their own identity. 

Not all of his work is equally accessible but this is a good book which shows how Christian 'practices' such as Baptism, justified on the basis of their own internal consistency (for that is the correctr starting point), can in turn bear witness to wider society as an example of how life can be lived. Yoder rejects the idea of two 'kingdoms' asserting that Jesus Christ is Lord over all and that the Church should bear witness to not only how things can be but in fact will be for the Kingdom is coming.

Baptists ofen wonder how from a position of the separation of Church and State Christians can engage with wider society - Yoder is writer who charts that course and in this work helps readers see how that can be done.

(Stuart Blythe)

Baptist Union of Scotland Council

A residential Council Meeting of the Baptist Union of Scotland was held between the 18th and 19th of May at Gartmore House. In part the purpose of the exercise was to model a new way of relational discussion and decision making learning not least from the experiences of BUGB and indeed for part of the Council we were joined by Jonathan Edwards the General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain (who kindly recognised the problems with the name!). The (new) General Director of the Baptist Union of Scotland, Alan Donaldson, also gave some important input related to matters of 'building missional relationships' and the 'mind' (of the meeting or of Christ?) was to go forward in informal and formal conversations exploring this idea through the prism of our own Baptist Identity in order to see where that took us.

Andrew Rollinson gave a really helpful bible study paper on the matter of 'communal discernment'. I have included it with permission on this post.Download Hearing God Communally Council May 2010 .

My own contribution (Stuart Blythe) at the invitation of the Council organisers was to deliver an address on 'Who do we think we are?' I engaged in some collaboration with others in the preparation of this although the final form and weaknesses in what was presented were all my own. I have also attached the address with some minor modifications. Download Who Do We Think that we Are May Council 2010 .

Alan's address is also now also avilable. Download Towards a vision for the future Council report .

The dangers of deadly preaching...

Recently was doing some lectures under the title of Preaching as Theatres. Building upon my research interests into preaching 'as performance', for these lectures I decided to engage directly with the work of experimental British theatre director Peter Brook in his older but nevertheless still significant and influential book The Empty Space.

In this work Brook identifies a number of causes/features of what he describes as 'deadly theatre' and I suggest that these can also be applied to that which can create 'deadly preaching', other peoples of course! Some of these features are:

dwindling audiences

dullness elevated as quality because if it is dull it must somehow be worthy

the pressure of economics on performers, theatres, and expectations

unengaged audiences

a failure of performers, specifically those over the age of 30, either to develop their skills or equally as critically to develop themselves as human beings

the constraint on performances of established conventions and contexts

an overemphasis on the few exceptional examples that do exist

inadequate preparation

the failure of performers to be inspired or inspiring by rising to the challenges of their own age

a failure for performers to understand the nature of their means of expression

a retreat to old formulae, old methods, old jokes, old effects in order to regain an earlier liveliness

performances that fail to elevate, instruct, or even entertain

When Brook critiques ‘deadly’ theatre he does so as one who loves the theatre but who sees what it could be. In a quirky little quote he writes:

‘The problem of Deadly Theatre is like the problem of the deadly bore. Every deadly bore has head, heart, arms, legs; usually, he has a family and friends; he even has his admirers. Yet we sigh when we come across him – and in this sigh we are regretting that somehow he is at the bottom instead of the top of his possibilities. When we say deadly, we never mean dead: we mean something depressingly active, but for this reason capable of change’.

 

 

Anabaptist Preaching

Missed this book when it first came out but have just finished reading it. In a series of 14 relatively short chapters the authors engage with Anabaptist (read Mennonite) preaching. From their own christo-centric ('when two texts disagree Jesus is the referee') biblical, discipleship concerned, radical reformed tradition. In doing so their work is informed, if not at times derivative of the developments in homiletics (the practice of preaching) associated with the North American Academy of Homiletics. As a consequence such as Fred Craddock, Thomas Long, and Barbara Brown Taylor are cited among others, as issues of contemporary hermeutics and homiletics such as narrative, collaborative, and phenomelogiocal approaches to preaching are discussed. In addition to these streams of Mennonite practice, and current homiletical theory, the work also engages readily and explicitly with the post modern situation and here it is noticeable that Brian McLaren writes the foreword. This matrix of connections, tempered in the post 9/11 American context, (published in 2003) results in an interesting, informative, and in places practical aproach to preaching. Perhaps above all the value of this work is the strength placed upon the participative role of the congregation as the 'hermeutical community' whose participation goes beyond even attentive listening to active engagement in the Anabaptist tradition of 'Zeugnis' which refers to the practice of offering verbal response after the sermon. This approach ensures that preaching is given an important role in the worship of a congregation but that the preacher is not exalted as superior to the congregation among whom they serve. There is good stuff here for those willing to take on board and experiment with new ideas in relation to preaching in a post modern context while holding to a high view of Scripture, the work of the Spirit, the presence of Christ, and a practised doctrine of the priest hood of all believers.

Blythe

A Kingly Samaritan

Just been reading an article on the 'prophetic preaching' of Martin Luther King Jr. since 'prophetic preaching' is an area of study for one of our students. In a sermon on the Good Samaritan, King Jr. engaged in what I would describe as a 'holy, revelatory, preaching performance' where the 'invisble becomes visible' as he concludes:

'One day the question will come. It'll come in your life. "What have you been doing, how have you been living?"...I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity. I choose to live for and with those who find themselves seeing life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign. This is the way I 'm going. If it means suffering a little bit, I'm going that way. If it means sacrificing, I'm going that way...because I heard a voice saying, "Do something for others." If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with word or song, if I can show somebody he is travelling wrong, then my living shall not be in vain. And then is we as a collective whole will follow this, none of our living will be in vain, for we begin in our little way to build God's kingdom right here.' 

Stuart B

What Baptists Stand For: Baptist shaped community

Adjectives are a good thing. But not when they're overused. If that happens, instead of clarifying they get in the way of clear meaning. Intended to qualify the meaning of a noun they are sometimes used to retread tired metaphors, or enhance meaning by piling up compliments or criticisms, or are added in to define more precisely what is already clear. But chosen and used with care, adjectives are important in conveying significant nuance, constructing and construing a more textured statement of what is meant.

The word Baptist can be noun or adjective. In the phrase "Baptist-shaped community" the word "Baptist" is an adjective,  constructing and construing a more textured statement of what is meant when we use the word "community". The adjective qualifies the noun. Baptist qualifies the shape of what is envisaged as community in a Baptist church. So when we use the phrase "Baptist-shaped community" as a value woven through our approach to College life and to theological education as formation for ministry, that word "Baptist" is expected to carry considerable freight.

The reason for that is simple. The word community is in danger of becoming a lazy cliche, a marshmallow word that is soft, sweet and squeezeable into most any shape that suits us. Community in itself isn't necessarily good - communities can be oppressive, introverted, selfish, hierarchical, exclusive. So as Baptists we qualify what we mean by community, and indicate the shape it must take, by bringing it under the cosntraint of Baptist convictions. So what are these convictions, and how do they make a difference to a community so that it is a different kind of community best described as Baptist?

A fellowship of believers, a gathered community of people of faith in Jesus Christ, who have covenanted together to follow faithfully after Christ

That covenant is centred on the person of Jesus Christ, grounded in a relationship of trust and promise, and expressed in baptism as an act of confession, witness and proclamation

Baptist shaped community grows out of the simple but radical conviction that where two or three gather together in Christ's name, there is a true church of Christ and there the risen Christ is in their midst

The church meeting then becomes an encounter where the members meet under Christ to discern his mind, with open Bible, in prayer and conversation, under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit, listening to God, to each other and to God through each other

Such community tries to embody the priesthood of all believers, expresses trust in the Headship of Christ in His church, and in the celebration of the Lord's Supper takes again the bread and wine that proclaim the incarnation, death, resurrection and coming again of Christ

Baptist shaped community, with all its limitations, embarrassments and failed aspirations, nevertheless looks to the life of the Triune God of love, and the mutual self-giving and harmony of purpose that outflow in the mission of love that flows out to the creation in mercy, peace and reconciling grace.

Baptist shaped community, then, is both ideal and reality, the reality at times falling short of the ideal. The ideal being no less urgent and attractive for all that.

In the life and teaching, the learning and sharing, the challenge and joys of our life together, in church and in College, such an ideal, and such a reality, make sense only because first and foremost we covenant together to live, by the grace of God,  towards a Christ centred faithfulness. Those convictions are themselves embedded in a deep loyalty to the Bible and lived out in a spirituality that is unabashedly Evangelical.

Jim Gordon.

What Baptists Stand For: Christ-centred faithfulness

Years ago a book on Baptist principles took as its title the mildly assertive title, What Baptists Stand For. It's still a good reasonable introduction to what it is that makes the Baptist way of being a Christian distinctive. But times change. And traditions like our own have to change too. Jaroslav Pelikan famously  said, "Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living; tradition is the living faith of the dead". Baptists have been impatient with tradition, jumpy about any concessions being made to that manipulative plea, 'the way it's always been done'. But we are a Christian tradition whether we like it or not. And I like it. 

At the same time a tradition must be living, organic, able to adapt and grow into new situations, changed by, yet also able to change, circumstances. A living transformative Christian tradition is a changing continuity, a growing and maturing way of being Christian, distinctive, with its own integrity and its own inner dynamic urging and impelling towards that faithfulness that answers the call of Christ to be who we are.

We've decided this blog could do with a bit more action. News about the College community. Comment about stuff that pushes our justice and righteousness buttons. Argument, or at least discussion about what us Baptists stand for. Theological upstarting in a constructive way about the things we won't stand for!

So for starters. We are currently working on the next College Development Plan, and while much of that remains open and discussable, there are some fixed points for us. Amongst these are the four values and convictions that lie at the heart of our College, because they energise the core of our College life and inform the content of a Baptist theological education. They are what we stand for.

Christ-centred faithfulness

Baptist shaped community

Biblically grounded theology

Evangelical spirituality

In one sense these are self-evident to us. But it is also true that they remain carefully chosen descriptors with no effective purchase on our lives unless they are lived, embodied, practiced; unless they represent habits of the heart, values in our thinking and acting, virtues of a Christlike character formed and transformed by encounter with the Living Lord.

So what do they mean, in practice? What do people look like who claim to make these core values the energising and directing principles of Christian discipleship?

This blog is now one of the places where we face up to those questions. And also where we persistently and honestly ask other questions, share conversation, compare insight and experience, argue with passion and courtesy, entrust our deepest convictions to each other so that we are mutually enriched. Or at least, so I hope. And in doing so we will try to live within our own commitments to Christ centred faithfulness; to Baptist shaped community; to Biblically grounded theology; to Evangelical spirituality. And these are not meant to be hard edged exclusion zones, but affirmations around which we express our lives in the freedom of Christ and in the power of the Spirit.

Jim Gordon, 5 November, 2009

Graduation 09

On Thursday 9th July 09 we celebrated the graduation of two of our students Peter Dick and Gordon Jones. Well done.