Observations from an Old Friend: A Baptist Sidebar

I will always retain a deep sense of gratitude to the Advent Christian Church, Berkshire Christian College, and in particular David A. Dean, and Freeman Barton.  You prepared me well for twenty eight years of pastoral and campus ministry and twelve years as a denominational executive. While pastoring a Baptist congregation, it was my joy to welcome Advent Christians into our church family. They came from Vernon, North Springfield and Derby Line VT, Oxford Ma, and Newport NH.  In a full circle moment I became pastor to Dr. Barton’s parents, an irony that Dr. Barton and I spoke of in the library at Gordon-Conwell. My spouse’s Christian journey began by boarding a Sunday School bus driven by Floyd McIntyre. We were married in her AC church, our wedding reception at Camp Faithful.  I have read and watched with a mix of warm nostalgia, some anxious moments, and a bit of grief the issues surrounding the ACGC Triennial. I have been bruised and exhausted in too many denominational meetings and conflicts not to empathize. I serve in a Baptist denomination that has fought itself into a fractured stalemate, and the parts, its thirty-three autonomous regions, continue to clash with one another. Yet at other times, we simply walk away from one another and continue to build our own alliances under a common denominational banner. There is a certain grieving fatigue that comes with attempted denominational reformation that doesn’t quite work out.  

To live in free church polity and espouse creedalism appears to be an oxymoron. And yet living in a post-Christian, if not neo-pagan era requires Christian definition and boundaries. I am an advocate for historic Baptist confessions and creeds, and uphold the apostolic creeds.  (My home church was where the New Hampshire Confession of Faith was edited and voted upon.)  Adventist free church tradition is rooted in baptistic antecedents. But Baptists have always had confessions, and applied them creedally. I have witnessed the phrase “We have no creed but the Bible” as a means to excuse not just heterodoxy and heresy, but down right apostasy. It is a myth to say Baptists are non-creedal. One only needs to read Keach’s “Baptist Catechism” to know, “we have no creed but the Bible” is a baptist fantasy. So I wonder if baptist fantasy has harmed adventists?  

But then my free church caution comes to mind.  Creeds are good.  But creeds can be  corrupted into cudgels. And the more fine tuned the creed, possibly the swifter and heavier the cudgel. And so much depends on leadership’s maturity. I have become more cautious that the use of political process and  power toward a theological end is a little like handling uranium. One needs to be cautious and circumspect, lest absorbing too much of the glow makes one ill.  Intricate theological definition does not equate to denominational or church renewal. Too often we convince ourselves that just the right statement of faith, or the most correct by-laws, or the perfect board of elders will lead to great things. But sometimes the refinement of an inward focus drains our energy from an outward mission.  

So it has been with some anxious thoughts that I have read what is transpiring within the Advent Christian Church. If Christ tarries, I wonder what the next three years will hold for the ACGC? I applaud the case for a timeless orthodoxy. But I also have witnessed an obsessive orthodox intricacy which forgets only the Holy Spirit can truly form a church system, culture, and mission. I know the AC’s as a place of long and deep friendships, and that ethos warms my heart every time I talk with an Advent Christian. In just a few moments I can learn about the lives of my BCC contemporaries. I think it takes much grace and wisdom, an awareness of the Holy Spirit’s work, silent discerning moments, to hold the best of free church polity, while defining and defending a faithful timeless orthodoxy. The choice really isn’t a momentary choice between free church practice and faithful orthodoxy.  In Eugene Peterson’s words, it is more “a long obedience in the same direction.”  After my own bruising denominational battles, the comfort has been found in relinquishing my wounds to God’s sovereignty, so as to draw closer to Christ.          

So I thank you again ACs, especially for BCC, for introducing me to Van Til and Berkhorf, Bonhoeffer and C.S Lewis, and the book I read my first semester, Resurrection: His and Ours.  With respect and admiration, wrapped in warm memories, from a distance, I extend my prayers. 

In Jesus name,  Dale R. Edwards