I work out with a group of middle-aged men who are reliving their glory days. Whenever a new member joins us, we give them a nickname to help us remember something about them. When they gave me my nickname, I told them that I worked with church leaders to help them advance the Great Commission. They began to brainstorm names such as Moses, Joshua, and Rev. Then one of them asked me what denomination.
When I said Baptist, in unison they all said, “Potluck!”
They didn’t say, “Oh, the Baptists are the ones who are first in and last out during a natural disaster, working to eradicate poverty through serving all public schools, or ending the adoption crisis in our foster care system.” Instead, we were known to them by our homecoming potluck lunches.
This November, we as South Carolina Baptists celebrate our 200-year anniversary. A few churches dreamed of cooperating together in missions and education toward one sacred effort of fulfilling the Great Commission. No other organization in South Carolina has given more resources, time and energy toward saving humanity than South Carolina Baptist churches. Our convention has been innovative: helping to give birth to the Southern Baptist Convention to cooperate nationally; forming the first Southern Baptist seminary, located in South Carolina; and creating the Sunday School Board (later Lifeway Christian Resources).
Although we have much to celebrate over the past 200 years, we cannot live in the past. We are on the road to irrelevance when we dream more about our glory days than our future days. God does not want you to relive who you once were; He wants to transform you into who you never dreamed you could be.
How will we be remembered for our next 200 years? I hope they remember our potlucks: potluck dinners where there was laughter; grandkids sticking their finger in the banana pudding; and people of every nation, tribe, and tongue united as one at the table — one family advancing toward one mission that is greater than any one of us, but not greater than all of us, while Jesus sits at the head of the table.