Why I Stay

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.  --Teddy Roosevelt

After reading the dire straits the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship seems to be in, I felt it necessary to do some reflecting on why I continue to believe in it when so many of my friends and colleagues have left.  I think the quote by Teddy Roosevelt helps explain why I continue to cast my lot with this particular community.  It isn't easy...choosing a ministry of persistence over one of prophecy.  I confess, I am drawn to the voices crying out in the wilderness - to the prophets who call for change and a radical departure from all that has been.  But I've found that I don't necessarily feel more at home with folks in the Emergent movement (in all its many iterations) than I do with my Baptist family.  I had to chuckle when I read my friend Rachel Held Evans' blog posts, 13 Things That Make Me a Lousy Progressive and 13 Things That Make Me a Lousy Evangelical - I'm right there with her.  Stuck in the middle...

But I keep on keeping on.  For some of my friends who have been maligned and trampled and abused by a church, I am their pastor and spiritual mentor.  If I had a quarter for everyone who says, "If you were the pastor of a church, I'd come back", I'd have a few hundred bucks.  That sentence humbles me and breaks my heart simultaneously.

So, I stay in the Baptist arena and "strive valiantly" and maybe, just maybe, plant some seeds and tend to my little garden in the kingdom of God right here and now.