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 21st 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 . . .
Today’s
the first of January 2020 . . .
