Just Some Food for Thought

When I read this I could not help but to think in terms of much of our modern ecclesiastical "situations". Read this text and see if you too hear much of it being played out in the here and now or atleast it should be said in the here and now. Fortunately, some of us see this and are trying to curb some of the older edges and actually engage the issues of today effectively. That is not to suggest that history is irrelavent, rather I am just suggesting that there is a present and that present and it needs to be relavently engaged.

The Briggs Commission document from 1978.

"All to easily, the living experience of one generation can become hollow and second-hand form for the next. Warning that there is a danger in our denominational life (English Baptist) of holding to out-dated structures and practices. We have to accept that some of our churches are open to the criticism that they have become closed in outlook, backward-looking, concerned to maintain a legacy from the past in terms of church plant and former glories, uncertain how to throw off the shackles of yesterday in giving themselves in totality to the mission of today".

McBeth, Baptist Heritage, 508.