Friday, September 24, 2010

A Word about the Proposed CBFNC Foundational Statement--Correction and Afterword

A corrected version of my September 21 blog post "A Word about the Proposed CBFNC Foundational Statement" now appears under that title and date. Whereas I had written that Dr. Larry Hovis, Coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina, had attended the 2005 Centenary Congress of the Baptist World Alliance, he did not attend the Congress but did receive reports about the Congress, including especially the printed "Message from the Centenary Congress" that was sent to members of the global Baptist community following the Congress. The blog entry has been corrected accordingly.

An afterword to the blog entry: While I emphasized the manner in which the proposed statement has received from others something the document's authors did not make, I should point out that reception does also necessarily involve a process of making one's own what is received from others. We are only at the beginning of this process of reception, so the proposed statement has not yet fully been made our own. Thus I also envision a process of reception that will continue to involve listening to responses to the proposed document from across the CBFNC community and that may also involve modifications to the document in light of those responses. It is possible that we can ultimately make the document our own in its current form, and it is possible that we can make the document our own only by revising it. Either outcome can reflect a faithful process of reception. The concise mission statement of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina is "Bringing Baptists of North Carolina Together for Christ-Centered Ministry," and the process of reception, of making this statement our own, must embody that mission. May it be so.

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