| Two years ago (October 2009), I was called to serve as pastor of Morning Star Baptist Church in Winston Salem, North Carolina. There is an idiom that goes: "the third time's a charm." What I was incapable of doing at the first church I served, because of my lack of formal theological training, and had to fight to do at the second church I served, because of determined resistance from a few congregants, I am now fortunate enough to have the opportunity to accomplish at the third church.;Working along with the church's leadership, and with congregants I hoped to put in place a relationally viable set of constitution and by-laws; which serve the highest ideals of the Christian faith, reflect Baptist doctrine and teachings (congregational rule), and serve the overall best interest of this gathered body of believers. The aim of my professional project is to craft a document that values, validates, and affirms the voice of each individual member as a vital part of this church, keeping in mind the apostle Paul's emphases on the unity and interrelatedness of the Christian body as outlined in chapter twelve (12) of his first letter to the church at Corinth.;Paul writing to a fractured and fragmented community, devastated by divisions, and factionalism, calls them to a higher order of being in relationship to the body of Christ. He gives a marvelous theological recitation (12:12--26), calling for the leveling of the relational ministry field for all members; tenured or untenured, accomplished or unaccomplished, learned or unlearned, rich or poor, female or male, Jew or Gentile, democrat or republican, and liberal or conservative etc. Paul for me appears to speak to the emotional, as well as the social psychological needs of this fractured community in relation to one another: But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member; that there may be no dissention within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another.1.;1 Michael David Coogan, Marc Zvi. Brettler, Carol A. Newsom, and Pheme Perkins, The New Oxford Annotated Bible: with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books (New York, NY: Oxford UP, 2001), 1Corinthians 12:22--25. |
