September 20, 2009: Ancient, Present, Future – Michael Hidalgo

Catholic, Protestant, First, Second, Third Baptist, Emergent, Reformed, Neo-Reformed, and the list could go on. All of these tags are ways we find ourselves describing the church. 

Some churches however want to be known by what they are not. We have our list of things that make us distinctive. Our lists draw boundaries separating local congregations from others. Over the last five hundred years, the Church has chosen to embrace these divisions rather than celebrating who we are both in our past and in our present.

We have bought into rugged individualism. As individuals, we believe our experience within the church is private, and does not need to include others. The attitude of the individual is indicative of the attitude of the whole. We remain separate from one another and live out an individual faith that is particular to each person. Living this way makes it difficult to believe that all Christians share the same heritage.

For a Baptist to hear that a Catholic has the same historical roots would be like meeting a guy you have never seen who tells you that he is your brother. That would complicate the world we have come to know and presently live in. We could only make sense of a new brother by learning where he is from and telling him where we are from. The role of tradition is to tell us where we are from.