Baptists Who “Do This”

Associated Baptist Press ^ | 6/25/12 | Steve Harmon

[marshmallow]

Cooperative Baptists are Baptists who “do this” when they get together. They “do this” not only in their local churches but also in their assemblies and in the institutions of theological education with which they partner.

I’m talking about the fact that when Baptists who identify with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship gather in settings beyond their local churches, they often follow the Lord’s admonition to “do this in remembrance of me” by celebrating the Eucharist. That’s what I found myself contemplating last week after receiving the Eucharist at the 2012 CBF General Assembly:—and at the associated gathering of Baptist Women in Ministry two days prior.

That’s something entirely different from my experience as a Southern Baptist from the “cradle roll” through seminary. To be sure, we observed the Lord’s Supper in our local churches (though rarely more frequently than four times a year). But to share in the Lord’s Supper in a worship service at an associational meeting, a state convention, a Southern Baptist Convention meeting, or a seminary chapel service would have been unthinkable—maybe even heretical. That was something only local churches did.

Cooperative Baptists have evidently not felt bound by that aspect of their heritage. It bears reflection that when those who now identify with the CBF have had the freedom to do something other than what they did as Southern Baptists, they have chosen to celebrate the Eucharist in gatherings that, while not baptizing communities, are communities of the baptized.

That Cooperative Baptists “do this” means at the very least that, despite a post-General Assembly Fort Worth Star-Telegram article that characterized the CBF as an organization that “has no doctrine,” they have at least one first-order practice that embodies a first-order conviction. (To be sure, there are others.) Cooperative Baptists seem to be convinced that it.....

[ruesrose]

When my husband was a patient in the ICU there was an announcement that Communion was being held in the chapel. It was a large hospital in a distant town from where we lived. I could not find the chapel in time to participate.
One of the nurses said she would bring the Chaplain to my husband’s room and our daughter, her husband and several nurses joined us for Communion. Just before it was served, one of the nurses whispered to me “The Host may taste a bit like someones roast beef sandwich”.

I think the Lord probably smiled.

[T-Bird45]

I guess the Christians of the First Century that are recorded in the NT as following the Lord’s direction and apostolic teaching would find themselves surprised to be called “heretical” because things weren’t done only a few times a year or only in the local church setting.

[WKB]

Baptist ping

[FrdmLvr]

One thing Baptists will not “do”, though, is to have sex while standing up because it leads to dancing. ;)

[OwenKellogg]

One thing Baptists will not “do”, though, is to have sex while standing up because it leads to dancing. ;)

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Also, they won’t speak to each other in the liquor store.

[Coldwater Creek]

I believe that the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is Jimmy Carters offshoot. In other words, LIBERALS

[chesley]

I believe that you are correct :)

[Yulee]

I believe that the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is Jimmy Carters offshoot. In other words, LIBERALS

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Very accurate observation. Jimmy Carter is a great spokesperson for their cause, and the view that the Bile “contains the word of God”, but is not necessarily “the Word of God”. Many get to choose which parts they think is and is not scriptural.

Sounds to me like the Laodicean church of Revelations. Just an observation.

[T Minus Four]

Since I left Catholicism, I have never heard of communion being called “the eucharist”.