by Keith Bassham
This month, the Baptist Bible Fellowship is 60 years old. Next month, June 23 to be precise, the Tribune itself turns 60, and in the next issue we will mark it officially. However, Baptist Bible College and Louisana Baptist University are both planning celebrations and recognitions for their respective graduation weeks.
I’m not certain anyone paid much attention to 60th anniversaries until Queen Victoria of Great Britain dubbed the 60th anniversary of her reign a Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Incidentally, if Queen Elizabeth still reigns in June 2012, that will be her Diamond Jubilee. I am a contrarian on the subject of celebrations (my wife will confirm), and I would rather observe off-year anniversaries, say the 35th or 36th.
There is, of course, nothing magic about the 50th, or the 60th, or the 75th anniversaries, but to do anything for that long should be noted. Just as any other human organization, the Fellowship has its historic highs and lows — proud moments and times we would like to forget. On the whole, we have done pretty well holding onto the things we should, and occasionally holding onto things that should have been let go.
As I mentioned a few months back, our founders held little hope that we would maintain organizational or doctrinal integrity beyond the first 25 years. I personally think it was in vogue to be a prophet of doom during the boom years of the Fellowship. So while they would make such public pronouncements, appearing all objective and statesmanlike, surely they were cheering everyone on in secret. After all, they were the founders — did they actually think so little of their work? But, on the chance they were honest in their doom-saying, let me say I am glad they appear to have been mistaken.
One other word. We like heroic stories with fireworks and pizzazz, but in the Tribune’s 60-year run you won’t find those things in day-to-day Fellowship life. They were admittedly more a feature of the early years of the Fellowship when massive energy was necessary to merely survive. But it is a mistake to believe church life is always going to be big, loud, and exhilarating.
It is a fact most of us do not worship and work in megachurches. Life is not loud and exciting; big things do not happen every Sunday; budgets are tight and there are parts of church work that are boring and routine. But the day-to-day plodding is probably more the norm for church life and has been so for most of the history of the church. Mega-thingies are the exception, not the rule; and we have survived as a Fellowship not because of the fireworks, but because of the dayto- day faithfulness of thousands of people who have done the grunt work, and the tedious teaching of doctrine and practical Christian behavior consistently and constantly, and just about everything you and I enjoy in this Fellowship is due, humanly speaking, to such people.