April 29, 2002
Wade serves up Baptist history
buffet for Missouri meeting
___By Bob Allen
___Associated Baptist Press
___BRIDGETON, Mo. (ABP)--If the world's Christians were invited to a covered-dish supper, what would the Baptists bring?
___"I'd bring the New Testament teaching of believers baptism by immersion, and I'd offer it as a gift to the other Christians," said Charles Wade. Why? "That's the sign and symbol of everything that's unique about us."
___Wade, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, spoke about Baptist distinctives at the organizational meeting of the Baptist General Convention of Missouri.
___The group, formed in part to support denominational agencies defunded by the Missouri Baptist Convention, met April 19-20 at the 195-year-old Fee Fee Baptist Church in suburban St. Louis, the oldest existing Baptist church west of the Mississippi River.
___"There are a whole lot more of you here today than there were Baptists in Missouri when Baptist work got started in Missouri," Wade said to a crowd of about 325 people attending the opening session.
___Wade touched on several topics that he said until recently would not have been controversial, such as whether or not the Baptist Faith & Message should be used as a creed.
___He quoted from a report during the first Southern Baptist Convention in 1845: "We have constituted for our business no new creed, having a Baptist aversion to any creed but the Bible."
___"That is our Southern Baptist heritage, and it goes back a long way," Wade said.
___That is in part because early Baptists were persecuted for their beliefs, he said. "Our Baptist forebears were the first to pay the price of persecution at the hands of Protestant Christians".
___"Faith in God must be free, or God doesn't want it," Wade declared. "There is no other kind, from a Baptist point of view."
___The leader of a rival state Baptist convention in Texas recently wrote a column criticizing Wade for his declaration that he would not sign a creed but would gladly sign every page of the Bible. Jim Richards, executive director of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, asserted that it "isn't enough" for a Baptist to say he or she believes every word of the Bible in order to be a Baptist.
___Wade told the Missourians he disagrees. "It is enough to believe the Bible," he said. "The Bible will take you to Jesus, and Jesus will introduce you to the Scripture."
___Baptists traditionally haven't asked people to affirm a creedal statement of faith, Wade said. "We've said, 'Stand on your feet and give your testimony.' That's the way the Baptists do it, and the rest of the religious world looks at us and they can't believe it."
___Still, Baptists' most unique contribution to the Christian faith is believer's baptism, Wade said. A lot of churches now baptize by immersion, "but they learned it from Baptists."
___"We learned it from Jesus," he quipped.
___"We don't carry anybody to baptism, and we don't coerce them. They come on their own."
___"Do you know how important that is?" he asked. "Every Baptist remembers when they were baptized."
___"God, as much as he loved us, didn't automatically save us. It doesn't come in your genetic structure. This is an invitation that God gives to a free people."
___"Out of that grows everything else," Wade said. "News that good has got to be shared. Everybody's got to know it. So we're a missionary people."
___Not all Baptists have felt that way, he acknowledged. Some Baptists historically believed that only "particular" people could be saved. Others countered that the gospel message is for everyone.
___While there is a biblical notion of predestination, Wade said Calvinists went wrong when they said God chooses some to be condemned. "Any doctrine that cuts people out of God's call, ... I don't know what you are, but you're not a Baptist like I am."
___Wade said Baptists also stand for democratic church governance and autonomy of local churches.
___"Preacher, you're not the head of the church. I'm sorry to break it to you," he said. "But neither are the deacons, the oldest member or the one who gives the most money. That job is already taken. Jesus is the head of the church."
___Some complain that Baptist polity allows churches "to do anything they want," and that's sometimes true, Wade said. But Baptists in their decisions are supposed to seek not their own will but to discern what Christ would want them to do, he countered.
___"We don't need a hierarchical person sitting up there telling us what to do," he said. "I'm not saying we don't need leaders. There's only one thing worse than a dictator and that's a pastor who won't lead. But remember, you're the undershepherd."
___Baptists also affirm that believers have direct access to God, Wade said.
___"When it's all said and done, dear people, the only faith he wants is a free faith."
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