Recently, someone offered me an image of the church that I haven't been able to stop thinking about: the church as a living organism.
Not simply a collection of people who happen to gather in the same place on Sunday mornings. Not an institution held together by buildings, budgets, programs, or committees. But something alive.
Living organisms do remarkable things. They care for themselves. They protect what is vulnerable. They respond when something is hurting. They adapt. They grow. They don't do these things because someone developed a strategic plan telling them they should. They do them because that is what living things do.
As we begin our visioning process at Second Baptist, I keep coming back to that image. Because if the church is a living organism, every part of it matters.
Maybe you've been at 2B for decades and wonder whether this next chapter belongs to younger voices. Maybe you've only been here a few months and wonder whether you've been around long enough to have an opinion.
Maybe you don't give much money or aren't as active as you once were. Maybe you aren't serving on a team or part of a small group—or you're still trying to figure out where you like to sit in the worship center. Maybe you don't know all the history. Maybe you are simply trying to figure out where you are in this organism.
You are still part of this living thing.
An organism doesn't depend upon every part being the same. Quite the opposite. Its life depends upon its parts being different.
That means the experiences you bring matter. Your questions matter. What you love about this church matters. What frustrates you matters. Where you see possibility matters. Even the things you aren't quite sure how to put into words yet matter.
Visioning, then, isn't a small group of people deciding what Second Baptist ought to become and presenting the answer to everyone else. It is an act of listening.
We listen to one another and for the movement of God among us. We pay attention to where there is life and energy, where there is pain, what needs tending, and where something new may already be beginning to grow.
And to do that well, we need the whole organism.
Not because every idea will become part of our future or because we will all agree. But because we cannot fully understand who we are without hearing from the people who make up who we are.
So as we gather for our first church-wide conversation on October 4 at 6:00 PM, I hope you will come—not because you have the right answer for Second Baptist, but because you are part of Second Baptist.
Come with your hopes and questions, your history or your newness, your certainty and uncertainty. There is no prerequisite amount of time, money, knowledge, service, age, or theological certainty required.
There is simply your place within this living community.
Perhaps our first task in imagining what comes next isn't deciding where we are going.
Perhaps it is paying attention to the life that is already among us.