The music at the Friday and Saturday sessions of the '07 Biennial that I attended was wonderful. It ranged from good to terrific to occasionally spectacular. Kudos to the committee that brought together such diverse and wonderful spiritual talent. Amen.
Sadly, the rest of the Friday plenary session fell flat. I didn't expect a strong conservative flavor to pronouncements and preaching. I didn't even expect a strong evangelical flavor, so, as conservative as I am, that's not what was disappointing.
This was the 100th Anniversary of ABCUSA (a.k.a. Northern Baptists), and the Friday night Evening Gathering was held in conjunction with two allies (Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and The Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc.) , but sadly it fell flat. There was no sense of traditional Baptist worship. There was little inspiration. No sermon took place. At the premier event of a Baptist meeting there was no preaching. It was replaced with a light weight Regis & Kelly type conversation in which the three execs of the three groups told us how wonderful the groups are, but it was not, to my mind, an acceptable replacement for Baptists being gathered together under the preaching of the Word. This was followed by communion by "intinction." Now Baptists are not familiar with intinction for the most part. Intinction is defined as steeping or dipping a wafer into the grape juice so the communicant can receive both elements. Of course, the communicant comes forward from his/her seat to line up and receive the elements. This created a traffic problem that was not conducive to spiritual sensitivity, and gave a sense of just going through the motions there in the Convention Center. It seems obvious to me that with three Baptists groups meeting together the traditional Baptist style of passing plates of matzo pieces (or bread pieces) and passing trays of communion cups would have worked better even with the large crowd that evening. It certainly would have been more conducive to making the communion service a more intensely "religious" experience. I'm sure the Baptist churches of the D.C. Convention and area would have been happy to provide Deacons and Deaconesses and Communion Services for such an event, and I am sure it would have made for a more smooth and worshipful communion. Intinction probably works much better in small groups, but it was not effective for ABC on Friday.
As I said, the music was great. So it was not a total loss.
Most national biennials I've attended, have left me inspired by the good things the denomination has done and is involved in. This one, despite some good speakers, seemed flat, and that is too bad since we were celebrating 100 years of ministry as a "Convention."
God bless ABC. God revive ABC. God bring ABC back to giving absolute authority to the Word of God.
