By Mark A. Taylor
If you read only one article in this special NACC Preview Issue, be sure you see the interview with convention president Cam Huxford.
Here”s a dialogue with a contemporary church builder who knows about evangelism, preaching, and servanthood. Here”s a preacher who speaks with humility about great leaders in our fellowship while ignoring the fact that he has become one of them. Here”s a fellow with his eyes focused on the future, but he shows no enthusiasm for throwing out the past.
He”s young enough to appeal to emerging leaders and old enough to speak with the wisdom of a veteran. And Cam Huxford, like several others testifying in this issue, believes in the NACC.
Cam knows about the negative press some have given the convention. And still he believes this is an event unique on the religious scene and important for everyone interested in the restoration of New Testament Christianity today.
I happen to agree with him.
I”ll admit I was a little stung by one reader late last year who wrote that Christian Standard has always published “puff” pieces about the convention and “nothing in any way critical.” He encouraged us to take “an honest look at what is actually happening out there.”
One gets the impression by listening to Cam Huxford that he is firmly in touch with the realities in our movement: Churches are growing. New churches are sprouting up everywhere. Megachurches are happening where we least expected them. Foreign missions are thriving beyond our ability to keep track of them. All this is “actually happening” among a group both firmly connected and fiercely independent.
But these are days of change. As voices from every corner herald the death of denominationalism, we ponder how to lift up that ideal while maintaining our unique identity.
The NACC is one of our few opportunities to discuss this on a national scale.
When we convene this summer, all of us will see something we could criticize. The same is true at any family gathering or church service. It”s easy to find perfect agreement in isolation. Self-absorption, stagnant thinking, bitterness, and loneliness fester there too.
At the NACC we see how God is working through others who lift up the same essentials we hold dear, even while we”re challenged by the great variety of opinions represented in our group. “We can agree on the lordship of Jesus,” Cam says this week, “and that”s what we”ll be celebrating at the North American.”
A look at the program described in this issue convinces me it will be a celebration far too grand to miss.
Author: Christian Standard
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