Behaving like a Baptist: Ruminating on Rumination

Preamble

My lifelong or long-life ecclesiastical journey twice passed through Baptist faith community. 

Those two journey-legs were separated by thirty-three years of living and serving within a Pentecostal faith community; I “came home” in 1997 . . .

 

Oh, BTW – for a couple of years in the late 1980’s, I went to seminary . . . a Pentecostal student at a Baptist seminary in Denver, Colorado . . .

Prepare to think with me

One day, seeming out-of-the-blue one of my seminary Profs stated; “Baptists ruminate . . . ”

“Interesting . . . ?”

Thinking his statement over, chewing reflectively, crystallising the impact of his words, and summarising their focused implications, I mumbled to myself; “shock, horror I’m still a Baptist inside, the default-behaviour is still inside me! I’m not an allegedly intelligent Pentecostal, I’m still a Baptist" . . .

Yes, we Baptists ruminate . . .

We read, listen, think, summarise, interact, and respond to ideas, perspectives, and communication from Biblical sources (aka preaching). Local and broader church forums are often characterised by debate or its 21^st century equivalent, reflection. We Baptists are a community of believers who don’t quickly embrace or subscribe to belief(s) without process. Our default-process is rumination.  The practice of turning a matter over and over in the mind, chewing the “cognitive-cud” by reflecting mulling over and over again; we don’t merely think, we think about our thinking. Rumination is a “vital-as” personal and communal custom in mission-centred Baptistic life; it is the fuel-source for the practices of debate and reflection. We’re a people of Scripture and Spirit. Through rumination, debate and reflection we can relationally-process Word and Spirit into missional action and lifelong discipleship.

If you are thinking, yes but how; keep reading and ruminate with me . .

Try this passage for size . . . 

1 Corinthians 1:26-31 (MSG)

“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.” 

• Got some emerging thought and understanding from the text???? 

• Some "ruminant fruit"????

• Why not post it as a "one-liner" in the comments box . . .