It’s Time…
to Renew the Baptist Witness
Acts 16:25-31
March 13 2005
First Baptist Church, Wilson, NC

Don’t you just love how the tables get turned in this account? Everyone who first appeared to be imprisoned turns out to be free. And everyone who first appeared to be free turns out to be in deep trouble. Paul and Silas are chained in the maximum security cell of a moldy prison in Philippi. But they spend the night praying and singing hymns to God as if they were free men. And then the Spirit of God moves and the earth quakes, and the jail doors open and the chains unfasten.

And who turns out to be the most bound and the least free? The jailer! He is bound to die, for his prisoners are loose. He draws his sword on himself. But Paul and Silas stop him. Don’t do it! We’re still here. What a strange night. Prisoners staying in unlocked cells. And then a jailer leading his prisoners out into the moonlight, and calling them sir:

This is a story of freedom: the freedom that comes from personally experiencing the grace of Christ. The Lord who saves the jailer from his own sword is the same Lord who saves him from his sins.

THE HEART OF OUR FAITH, AS CHRISTIANS AND AS BAPTIST CHRISTIANS, IS A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF FREEDOM IN CHRIST. The gift of Christ’s forgiveness sets us free from our sins. The gift of Christ’s resurrection sets us free from our death. There is no greater freedom. In fact, without freedom from sin and death, there is no other freedom worth having. You may live in a democracy and have political freedom. You may be rich and have the freedom to buy anything and go anywhere. But if you are still bound by your guilt, and if you still fear the grave that awaits you, then you have only the appearance of freedom. But when you experience the forgiveness and the eternal life that Jesus Christ gives, then you are of all people the most free.

Baptists are very passionate about that liberating personal experience with Christ. Anyone who is new to Baptist ways will soon discover that the most important thing for us is whether you have had a personal experience of the grace of Christ that has set you free from sin and death. When someone comes into the baptismal waters, I ask, "Have YOU experienced Jesus as your savior who has rescued you from sin and death? Do YOU commit to follow Him the rest of your life?" We don’t do baptism for everybody automatically. We wait until a person has had his or her own personal experience with Jesus. We don’t ordain people to the ministry automatically either. Steve Flowers, son of Alec and Barbara Flowers, will soon be undergoing a review for ordination. When he comes up for review, the main question will not be "What happened to the Jebusites in the Bible?" or "What is the doctrine of atonement?" The main question will be, "Tell us your own experience with Jesus." That is very Baptist.

The personal experience of freedom in Christ is crucial for individuals. The power of Christ can set individuals free from all things that enslave us, such as our addictions to pornography and drugs, and our addictiosn to greed and materialism, and anything else in our culture that would imprison us.

The personal experience of freedom in Christ is crucial for groups of believers in churches, for churches can get addicted too. Churches can get addicted to controlling people’s lives. Why is it that it is often churches that are the most uptight and the most confining places that we know of? You can see that tension in the New Testament: wherever the liberating gospel proclaimed by Paul met up with legalists who had their own ideas of who should and who should not respond to the gospel. You could even see that tension when "The Sound of Music" was performed in Wilson last month. Remember how the nuns worried over what to do with a free spirit like Maria?

Some of those nuns just didn’t know what to do with a free spirit like Maria in their convent. Trying to give her the structure she needed without quenching her spirit was like holding a moonbeam in your hand.

By the same token, sometimes the church is not sure what to do with the free spirit of the gospel. Passing the gospel on from one generation to the next is like holding a moonbeam in your hand. We have always struggled with how to provide enough organization and structure in the church without quenching the spirit of the gospel. Every now and then we realize that we have gotten too tight and too structured and too controlling, and we have to relax our hand and let the radiance of the gospel shine. That’s what happened when Martin Luther spurred the Reformation, when he said the most important thing in church is not all the creeds and traditions and popes and bishops but sola scriptura and sola fide, only Scripture and only faith. That’s what the early Baptists did when they returned to the liberating power of the gospel. That’s what we do whenever we renew our passion for a personal experience of faith in Christ.

THAT IS WHY BAPTISTS PREFER CONFESSIONS TO CREEDS. It is our passion for a personal experience of Christ’s liberation that has led us Baptists to stay free from creeds. I think Daniel Vestal said it just right in his book when he wrote,

We Baptists try not to waste our time playing religious police and making sure we all agree on everything. What we would rather do is give people a Bible and let them read it for themselves and then ask them, "Now, how are you experiencing Jesus Christ through these pages? Have these words made Jesus real to you?"

OUR PASSION FOR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH CHRIST IS ALSO WHY BAPTISTS TRY TO STAY FREE FROM HIERARCHIES IN CHURCH. In a hierarchy, the member are bound to obey what the pastor tells him, and the pastor is bound to what some authority or panel tells him, and that authority is bound to what someone else tells them, and theoretically God is at the top of that chain. But as Baptists, we hold that every believer has a personal and direct experience with Jesus Christ. Therefore every believer is free to know the will of God by direct and personal experience with Jesus Christ. And thus, a free church puts not only the Bible into the hands of the people, it also puts the ministry in the hands of the people.

Now I’ll admit that this can be so much freedom that it can lead to chaos. It is so true that wherever two or three Baptists are gathered together, you have three or four opinions. Being a Baptist can be messy. Being Baptist, as someone said, is sometimes "more than a body can bear." Sometimes it is more than some Baptists can bear, for sometimes you’ll hear a Baptist forget his heritage and say "I can’t work with that Baptist because we don’t agree on some important things." And then he will quote Amos 3:3, "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" (KJV) Actually that’s an old misquote, for the verse actually goes more like, "Do two walk together unless they have made an appointment?" (NRSV, but also Moffatt, TEV and even NIV have similar translations.)

Such schisms in the name of doctrinal integrity remind me of the man who was shipwrecked on a deserted island. After a few years he was rescued, and he invited his rescuers to tour the island. "Here is my house. Here is my storehouse for supplies. Here is my church. Here is my other church." The rescuers asked, "Why two churches for one person?" The castaway replied. "Well that was my first church, but then we had a falling out."

Baptist freedom leads often to Baptist disagreement, but we still prefer that to

the spiritual oppression that comes when one human authority or human statement is interposed between believers and Christ. We much prefer the chaos of religious freedom to the oppression of religious tyranny. But what can hold us together in the chaos is our personal experience of God. Again, I think Vestal says it well when he writes:

I know Baptists who are charismatic and Baptists who are not charismatic.

I know Baptists who are liberal and some who are fundamentalists.

Some are "high church" and some are "low church."

Some are Republicans and some are Democrats.

But the central reality of life in the Baptist witness is

personal experience of God’s grace revealed in Jesus Christ.

Let’s now take that one step further: A MISSIONAL CHURCH IS A FREE CHURCH THAT VALUES A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF JESUS CHRIST. A missional church is free to hear the call of God directly for its own mission. We do not wait for some office in Atlanta or in Nashville to give us the program. We are free to read the Bible ourselves to seek God’s guidance for this congregation. We are free to pray directly to God about God’s will for this church. And then we wait patiently for God’s direct voice to us. And then when that voice comes, in whatever form it comes, we act.

All of this comes as we follow the liberating Spirit of Christ, who frees us from our sins, who frees us from death, who frees us even from church bureaucracy. In the future, I don’t know what will happen to denominational labels like Baptist or Catholic or Pentecostal. But I know that these two convictions will continue to propel missional churches into the future:

• We are passionate about our liberating personal experience of the grace of Christ.
• We are free from any manmade creeds or hierarchies that would come between us and our personal experience of Christ.

Last Wednesday night Dr. Kunjumon Chacko described the mission of his Baptist children’s homes ministries in India. Friday I took him to meet Dr. Michael Blackwell, President of the Baptist Children’s Homes of North Carolina. Dr. Chacko and I are two very different people from opposite sides of the world. But when he got into my car, the first thing he asked me was, "Tell me Doug, how did you come to know the Lord? What is the story of your personal experience of Christ?" For any Baptist, for any Christian, that is the most important thing.

-- Douglas E. Murray