A Young Baptist’s Reason to Remain

By Ken Williams
The Baptist Standard

Five years ago, while studying at Texas A&M University, I took a job as the youth minister of a small Baptist church in the Conroe area north of Houston. Having been born and raised in a large Bible church, I entered the Baptist world relatively oblivious to the situation I was getting myself into. Needless to say, it was not long after I began to identify myself as a Baptist that I became aware of the stigma associated with that name; stigma, may I add, that was well-deserved.

I was a young Baptist minister living in a time when the leaders of my denomination were more concerned with the sexual orientation of Disney characters than the fact that roughly 7,000 children were dying of malnutrition each night. I was embarrassed that my denomination chose to use its resources to defend archaic scientific theories and remove women from leadership positions rather than to let justice roll on like a river, and I was enraged by the pettiness of it all. READ MORE.
It was a time when a small number of powerful leaders had so corrupted the word “Baptist” that a large number of churches found it necessary to strike it from their name, keeping their denominational affiliation secret in order to maintain some level of credibility. And it was a time when I was willing to do the same.

But although I felt hurt by the actions of some contemporary Baptists, what compelled me to stay within the denomination was the legacy left by Baptists of the past. These were men and women who shared a conviction that the freedom to work out one’s faith was more important than the transmission of right doctrine, and they believed that social concern was an integral part of that faith. They organized themselves so that each body of believers was free to choose its own path, answering only to God. They had a high view of the Holy Spirit’s power to direct the church without their assistance, and they refused to be restricted by any creed or statement of faith.

This is a new time, and I am part of a new generation of Baptists—a generation that is rising up all around the nation. We are a generation that finds great value in the principles of our Baptist heritage and yet finds it unacceptable to define ourselves by the principles of our recent predecessors. We believe the people of God are called to participate in the kingdom of God. We believe social justice speaks louder than political coercion. We believe in serving the world, rather than withdrawing from it. And we will no longer capitulate to a system that promotes intolerance and injustice in the name of dogma.

I see it all around me: I see it in the seminaries, I see it on the blogs, I see it in college groups and in the Emerging Church that is sweeping the nation. We are young, we are passionate about our values and we are mobilizing all across the country because we are unsatisfied, and we will no longer be silenced by the tyranny of a few powerful men. We are looking toward the future, and we are desperate for something new.

As a result, several thousand young Baptist leaders like me are headed to Atlanta on January 30 to participate in the New Baptist Covenant. We are going because we believe the next chapter in Baptist history is going to start sounding more like the first. We are going because we believe Baptists of tomorrow must adopt an entire new set of values—values big enough to include renewed sense of social justice and racial reconciliation. We do not expect to change 30 years of corruption in three days; we only hope to take the first step on the journey we have been called to travel.

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