CONNECT TO MISSION
God’s Good Expanding our understanding of community Community at First Baptist Church, London. Photo courtesy of Susan Plumridge (back row, left) “But my name is honored by people of other nations from morning till night. All around the world they offer sweet incense and pure offerings in honor of my name. For my name is great among the nations,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. (Malachi 1:11 NLT) God’s Church includes people from around the world. In 2006, God brought a Sgaw Karen Baptist community to our church—First Baptist Church in London, Ontario. A people from halfway around the world arrived in this city and joined with our church community. Over the years though, our communities drifted apart. We by Susan Plumridge Susan is the moderator of the deacon’s board at First Baptist Church in London. She is a haiku poet and author of the children’s book At Your Feet, Lord (a story of Mary of Bethany).. 16 live live •• March March -- April April 2021 2021
assumed that joining meant the Sgaw Karen Baptist community would become like us as they absorbed Canadian culture. However God is creative, all His people are creative and we need to work together to build a unity that allows our diversity, our differences, to be used to our advantage as together we honour and worship God— Father, Son and Holy Spirit. First Baptist Church, London, has been at this threshold before—when we combined two of our three worship services into one experience. Led by Rev. Alan Roberts, we blended our traditional worship service and the contemporary worship service into a time that we hoped would honour both the style and creativity that each genre brought to our worship. Our goal was to create something new that allowed honest input from both traditions. Unity and creativity would lead the way toward us keeping our
diversity. We stand on the threshold of inspired good today. In one sense the lessons we’ve learned from our commitment to offering a blended worship service will stand us in good stead. We will need to grapple with hard questions: Is a truly united English and Sgaw Karen worship service possible? How will we incorporate English and Karen languages into the service? How will we provide choir and band rehearsal so that we learn each other’s music? How do we become a safe space so that all our children can learn to participate? And beyond Sunday worship services: How will we structure meetings so that everyone can speak and be heard? But God calls His people to unity. And perhaps He’s calling us to be inspired; to become First London International Baptist Church. Susan Plumridge
