When a Baptist* says “Lord’s Supper” he means “communion.” When she says “bread”, she means crackers.  When she says “wine” she means “grape juice.” When a Baptist says “contemporary” he means the church bought a keyboard.

I speak Baptist fluently—the result of 30 years on the inside.

But there’s a new phrase in the Baptist lexicon I’m not sure I understand; I’ve only been hearing it for the last few years on the road.  What does it mean when a Baptist says “We’re not a typical Baptist church?”

I heard this yesterday at First Baptist Fort Lauderdale – a beautiful urban church run by what seemed to me to be wonderful people: The same kind of place and people who cared for me when I was a kid in a Baptist Sunday school class, who shouldered by selfishness and bad fashion choices as a teen, and gathered around me eleven years ago when Becky and I said “I do.” What’s changed exactly?

I hear this sentiment from many Baptist churches in some form or another.  While the show is being book we’re sometimes assured by the minister-acting-as-promoter that his church is “not you’re father’s Baptist church.” When we arrive, over dinner perhaps, a volunteer will say between bites of salad, “We’re not Baptist Baptist.”

But they always are.

They’re often reluctant to clap or move during my shows but yet they stand and applaud at the end and stick around afterward to shake my hand, hug my neck and douse me in kind words and sincere smiles.  There’s always a stage and seats and a guy called a pastor who uses words like “sin”, “grace”, “saved” and “Jesus.” Those crackers and grape juice get passed around the room – but not every week.  People make “public professions of faith” and then get baptized by going all the way under in a tank called the “baptistry” somewhere in the big room called the “sanctuary.” Friends and fried chicken are always in ample supply. Regardless of which state I’m in or which decade it is, these things never change.

So what does it mean to not be a “typical Baptist church” today?

My guess is that Baptists are ashamed of being Baptist – self-conscious and more than a little afraid of what you think they are.  My guess is when a Baptist says they’re not “typical,” they mean to tell you they’re not what you’ve heard or read in the news about them, that their pope and their denomination’s PR guys don’t speak for them – not all the time. 

When a Baptist tells me he’s not “typical” I wonder if what he’s really saying is this: I don’t hate gay people or Mickey Mouse or Ellen and that boycott was dumb and unproductive and most of us thought so.  I don’t wear a suit on Sunday.  I don’t even own one.  I don’t think it was a good idea to hold a press conference about the whole “women must submit” thing and it was extra unwise to make such a statement through a middle-aged man.  I don’t hate Democrats and I don’t fear evolution.  And I didn’t go to a Baptist college and I don’t think 9-11 was God’s wrath against sin and I don’t agree with almost everything else Jerry Falwell ever said.  Also, my church doesn’t have a pipe organ and we sing some songs that aren’t in a hymnal and I’m pretty OK with that.  And I like beer.  I also dance, sometimes, for just a second, in my car, while biting my lip.

Could it be that “we’re not typical Baptist” is just shorthand for “we’re embarrassed of and disagree with a lot of stuff our leaders have done and said in our name?” And if that’s true, if Baptists, with increasing frequency, are taking the name “Baptist” off their signs and greeting visitors like me with disclaimers and distancing themselves from their denomination’s official positions, what does that say about the quality of leadership in the denomination, the efficacy of that form of leadership, or whether they’re really leading anyone at all?

Thank you to First Baptist Fort Lauderdale for feeding me well, laughing loudly, attempting to clap, and releasing 14 kids from poverty.  Pretty typical stuff for a Baptist church.