Editor: I read this post at Trevin’s site and thought it was brilliant. Trevin was gracious enough to offer it to me to repost here. I am grateful for that. Enjoy!
There is never a dull moment when the Wax family gets together. We are all opinionated, loud, and passionate. Just ask our spouses. Or our kids.
We have never been the kind of family who gets together at holidays and birthdays and wastes time with chitchat. Polite conversation is boring. So we tend to focus on subjects you’re not supposed to discuss in polite company. Politics and theology dominate.
Sometimes, when I see my family going at it, I wonder if I’m witnessing a microcosm of the Southern Baptist Convention, my denominational family.
My grandparents are staunch conservative Baptists. Christians shouldn’t go to movies, which means they won’t babysit our kids if that’s where we’re going!
My parents would line up pretty closely with the recent “Traditional Statement” on Baptist soteriology, although I suspect Dad might have some quibbles with Article 2.
Mom is a premillennial dispensationalist, which tends to influence the timing of when she serves dessert.
And then there’s us kids. I’m the oldest, so I need to take responsibility for being the one who started all these discussions by questioning much of what I was taught in American Christianity. (Five years overseas will do that to you.) Today, soteriologically speaking, I’m about where W. A. Criswell was, but I’ve got a soft spot for high church liturgy and a major man-crush on the late G. K. Chesterton.
My younger brother is an Iraq war veteran, a deacon in his church, and a Sunday School teacher. He’s the most politically involved, and he keeps us all politically informed. I call him the “Richard Land” of the Waxes.
Then there is my sister and her husband. Their church is elder-led. They lead a community group. They’re personally okay with Christians who drink in moderation, which horrifies my mother to the point she might take up drinking, were it not for her stance on total abstinence. They’re vegans too, but I don’t think that has anything to do with anything, except that we never know what to cook when they’re coming.
My youngest brother is a recent college graduate. When we talk theology, he sounds like someone put John Calvin and Stanley Hauerwas in a blender. The result is that he is the strongest Calvinist and Anabaptist in the family. For a while, we battled over pacifism (irony, I know), but “just war” theory won the day. Whew! Close one.
So…when you put us all at the table during the holidays, you can imagine our conversation topics:
- Election – God’s election or the next U.S. election, take your pick
- Debates over the rapture that last so long I’m convinced we’ve begun the millennium
- Alcohol, abstinence, and wisdom
- Capital punishment
- War
- Christian political involvement
- Patriotic displays in church
- Extent, intent, sufficiency of the atonement
- Open communion, closed communion, and everything in between
- Church polity and structure
- Lord’s Supper – sacrament, ordinance, how often?
- Age of accountability
- Baptizing young kids
When we have guests, they say things like, “You guys don’t hold back.” But then they also say things like, “The only thing more surprising than the intensity of your discussions is the obvious underlying commitment you have to one another.”
I guess that’s what I love most about my family. We are more passionate about each other than we are about our ideas. We’re united without being uniform.
During the past few weeks, we’ve all been cheering on my sister as she leads a Bible study with three unsaved women. We’ve been praying for my mom’s manicurist for years. Whenever we lead someone to the Lord, we celebrate over email. Dad is in his fifties, but he wants to plant a church to reach unbelievers. Grandpa may not go to movies, but he’s spending his retirement years printing Bibles for other countries. You see, the mission matters more than our family debates.
I wish denominations were a little more like family. I wish we’d sit across the table more often from precious saints who don’t always see things the same way. I wish our passion for each other was stronger than our passion for our pet preferences. I wish we’d cut each other some slack instead of nitpicking each other to death. And I wish the fervor of our denominational debates was matched by our fervor for evangelism.
We are family. Because of Christ’s death, we share the same bloodline. Because of Christ’s resurrection, we share the same power. Because of His ascension, we share the same mission. So let’s act like it. Let’s live in the unity Christ bought for us and love each other fiercely, even more fiercely than we sometimes disagree.
Sounds like a good family that our denom ought to emulate… and then there are others who our denom already emulates.
Good article. Put a smile on my face as I tot about my family!
or “thot about my family” as the case may be
I love this article and I wish we could all choose to love one another like this. For my part, I will choose to love my brothers, even if we disagree. All of this ongoing strife weighs heavily on my heart and causes me great concern for the future of our Great Commission efforts and the furthering of the Kingdom.
It’s one of those articles that you read and think, “I wish I’d written that!”
Yeah, I saw this a couple of days ago and thought it was brilliant.
Spot on.
Trevin Wax,
God bless your Grandaddy, your Granny, your Momma, your Daddy, and your God and Country Lovin’ War Vet Brother.
The rest of you need to cowboy up, come down here to the SABANATION, watch a real FOOTBALL game, eat some B-B-Q to end this vegan heresy, and straighten up so the next family gathering will be more cordial.
I wonder if Trevin’s family is age-graded or family-integrated? Joking. Great article and challenge.
Get up everybody and sing.
Another thing; Why do these people not wear shoes?
What’s so important about shoes? #NativeArkansan
Thanks Bart.
That explains the situation very well for me. I thought it might be the vegan thing having something against leather.
I’d suspect that none of them think that any of the family should be tossed out based on their opinions. If so, this is where they depart from the SBC. Many of us feel that some should be removed from the fellowship because of what we believe about one thing or another.
I really appreciate that last paragraph. Thanks.
Great post. Beautiful sentiment. Encouraging.
One problem . . . God ordained the family, man created the denomination.
I’m not sure you are going to make the latter like the former. I don’t think it is possible. However, I do think you can use the family as a model. And, to the degree that is humanly possible, we can do exactly what the post says: find unity in diversity.
But even Paul says, this is only “as much as lies withing you.” It will never be perfect. Then again, maybe that’s how a denomination is MOST like a family.
God ordained the churches. That’s all our denomination is…a collection of churches.
Bart, I don’t disagree with you about Jesus ordaining the church, unless you are suggesting that such an ordination extends to the denomination. Snowflakes for example represents peace and fragility, the epitome of harmlessness. However, a collection of snowflakes is an avalanche full of death and destruction. I think we err greatly when we place too much emphasis on the church as an equivalent extension of the family, or the denomination as an equivalent extension of the church. Though, I see the analogy, I also see no way to have the kind of harmony in the denomination that we can… Read more »
Frank, There are a number of ways in which I would be hesitant (no…more than hesitant) about extending the authority of the church to a denominational apparatus. Certainly there’s a point to what you’re saying. I just don’t think it applies here. Because really, all this post concerns is the behavioral ethic governing the interaction of individual Southern Baptist believers. This isn’t about polity. This isn’t about ordinances or other matters of institutional ecclesiology. This is just about fraternal relationship. Perhaps to make my point better, let’s work through a hypothetical. Suppose there were no denominational institution present here. Suppose… Read more »
Bart, I see your point and generally agree with it within the context of how I understand the “global” (communal) aspects of the Bible. When we use terms like “sister churches,” and “brothers and sisters” with Biblical warrant to justify the SBC, I think we miss the essence of those words in the Bible context. I perhaps disagree mildly (as a matter of conversation not debate) as to whether the SBC is simply and “aggregate of churches.” The SBC is, in fact, its own thing. It is, in fact, not made up of “churches,” but messengers who act independently of… Read more »
Well, again, what you are saying is true with regard to, say, the Annual Meeting as a institution. But Trevin’s post is not about the Annual Meeting. It’s about the way that these churches and the individuals who are a part of these churches behave in their interaction with one another.
If sister churches are sister churches, they don’t CEASE to be sister churches just because there’s an annual meeting of messengers from them.
Bart, My point of view, by the way, comes from having a private school as the primary ministry of our church. What I’ve come to realize is that our private school is the “second-best” option for educating a child–the best being the one God ordained which is to home school. I realize that even when I try to take the best of a Deuteronomy 6 plan and extend it into a school, there is a certan degree of frustration that will be experienced, even on our best days. Therefore, I’m thinking (in full agreement with this post) that even when… Read more »
Makes me think of my family, my maternal grandparents in particular, where everyone gathered for Sunday dinners of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cog, green beans, fried okra, tomatoes (fresh from the garden), oinions, gravy (chicken, no less, meaning cooked in the pan with some of the giblets), chocolate, coconut cream pies, biscuits, and ice tea. After eating the adults gathered for the biggest arguments over politics, conspiracy, etc. Shortly, I was off to play with all of my cousins. Now all of those voices are silenced, forever in this world, and I grief at their loss. The… Read more »
My dear Dr. James Willingham,
you have just given me my menu for next Sunday’s table
. . . it all sounds so very good, and everything you mentioned is in season and fresh! Thank you for that good inspiration.
I shall think of you when we say blessing at table!