There are a lot of powerful memories I will always maintain from Wild Goose 2011. There are the wildly entertaining nights at the Patheos RV, there are the great lot of people I knew only through Twitter that I finally got to meet face to face, there were the speakers that I went there to hear (like Jay Bakker, Tony Jones, Peter Rollins and Shane Claiborne) and there were the people I had never heard of before that pleasantly surprised me (like Richard Twiss, Hugh Hollowell, Margot Starbuck and Sean Gladding).
However, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most powerful memory I will forever maintain from Wild Goose 2011 is the closing ceremony. To understand why that experience moved me so deeply, you have to know a bit about my story.
Wild Goose 2011 was my first “Emergent Gathering.” It was the first time I had been to any conference outside the confines of my congregation (SBC). There’s not much diversity within the Southern Baptist Convention, so my childhood was spent with other middle to upper class white kids. I grew up thinking that Catholics and Pentecostals were going to Hell (the Methodists were okay).
When I was about 16, I found myself in a Pentecostal Church because I needed something more and perhaps the Pentecostals gave me that something more. I was yearning for a God that meant more. I was yearning for a religion that was more than a rulebook.
So, if we can fast forward from 16 (2004) to June 26 at 12:30 in the afternoon on a hot humid hill in the woods of North Carolina, we will see a young man surrounded by lovely people (Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, Buddhist Christians) who were all followers of Christ. We will see him sharing wine and pita bread as Holy Communion with these people and we will see him glance at his fiancé who is in tears because she has prayed for this moment of “ecumenicity,” this moment where all of God’s children can sit, share a meal and it be okay. These people prayed together, laughed together and ate together for about two hours.
So, what do I think this means for the future of Christianity? It’s plain and simple: you have a group of young people who are going to embrace each other. You have a group of young and old people who are tired of their denominational constraints.
If the denominations don’t learn to embrace ecumenicity, they will die. I don’t know what this means and I don’t have the answer. I owe to my Baptist roots a love for the Scripture and all the foundations of my faith. But if we don’t embrace people of different religious backgrounds and learn to see the Christ in their religious traditions and love them with the love of Christ, you will continue to see a great falling away from the denominations.
What do you think? Am I way off base here? Is there room within the denominations for them to love on one another? Or is the only answer post-denominationalism?
Terry Smith is learning to live in the tension of being Baptist and Emergent. He is planning to marry his beautiful fiance in August and move to Atlanta soon thereafter. You can find his internet home at tsmith0095.wordpress.com and follow him at @TerryRamoneSmit.
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