SPRINGFIELD – In the final moments in his two years as president of the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC), Bruce McCoy urged messengers at the annual meeting in Springfield to put aside petty differences and be one.
McCoy, pastor of Canaan Baptist Church, St. Louis, said that all Missouri Baptists share certain essentials—the virgin birth, God-inspired scripture, a six-day creation, a literal flood, the literal miracles, shed blood and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But, he added, smaller, less essential difference must not disrupt the unity of the MBC.
His text began with 1 Corinthians 1:9-10, in which Paul wrote to a divided, fractured church with a message applicable to Missouri Baptists: “God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful. I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.”
“Unity isn’t the goal,” McCoy said. “Unity is the result of true fellowship with Christ. That should be our goal. We can become unified and happy in our irrelevance and incompetence, but I want more than that. Dwelling in unity with other believers is a re-birthmark of our conversion through Jesus Christ. Our preferences are not equal to our faith.
“Divisions are a result of our falling out of fellowship with Christ,” he said. “It’s God will that we go out and multiply to do the work of an evangelist. But you see when we step away from our fellowship, the painful result is not multiplication, but division.
“If our unity is dependent on being a good Baptist, then Lord help us all,” McCoy said. “But when our unity is truly dependent on our one Lord, one faith and one baptism, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. This unity is found in the Reformation, this unity is found in true spiritual renewal, this unity is found in the great revivals of our land, and this kind of unity is present in the persecuted Church. And I believe this kind of unity is burgeoning even among us as Missouri Baptists.”
BRIAN KOONCE/staff writer
bkoonce@mobaptist.org