Baptists go Uniting

The Uniting Church appears to have become an inviting place for Baptists to work. Here’s a list of former Morling College staffers who have taken up roles in the Uniting land.

• Graham Hill (Morling faculty, Vice-Principal, then Provost), now working with The Uniting Church NSW Synod leading a strategic church planting initiative as “Mission Catalyst for Church Planting and Missional Renewal.”
• Andrew Palmer, Morling College’s “Plunge” Director (similar to a gap-year missions training program), now with Wesley Mission Sydney
• Karina Kreminski (Morling College faculty, Morling College Tinsley Institute missiologist), now UCA NSW Mission Catalyst – Formation and Fresh Expressions
• Rod Benson, former Director of the Morling College Centre for Christian Ethics, then Ethicist and Public Theologian at the Tinsley Institute, is in the process of being approved as the minister of North Rocks Community Church, a Uniting congregation, and also serves as General Secretary of the New South Wales Ecumenical Council.
• Andrew Parkinson, not a ex-Morling staffer, but a former NSW Baptist minister and Scripture Union staffer in the NSW Central West, now works as Culture and Safety Officer for the NSW Synod of the Uniting Church.

It’s healthy when people move around, allowing for two or more institutions to refresh. The Other Cheek would want to avoid drawing a grand generalisation from this list, or a conspiracy theory. Morling College has long been a conservative evangelical organisation, with principals like Ross Clifford leading the college in that direction.

But the Baptists have been having a drawn-out cultural moment. The NSW/ACT Baptist Association has adopted a conservative policy statement on same-sex marriage, and The Other Cheek understands that making the policy mandatory has played a part in some of these people leaving the denomination.

But it is not a full explanation for the moves. For example, Andrew Palmer joined the core evangelical part of the Uniting Church at Wesley Mission. Graham Hill and Karina Kreminski have joined the Uniting Church in brand new roles and have the opportunity to shape a planting and renewal strategy.

There is a sense in which the NSW ACT Baptists – although set up as an association of autonomous congregations and thinking of themselves as a movement – have taken on the characteristics of a denomination in adopting a policy on same-sex marriage.

That’s Benson’s view, for example: “Sadly, an exodus like this only increases the pace of fundamentalism within the denomination as strong voices for moderation and Baptist distinctives such as liberty of conscience depart,” he tells The Other Cheek.

However, note that those who opposed the new rules that will force some churches and ministers who accept same-gender marriage to leave the Baptist Association may not share that position, but may simply want everyone to be able to serve in the same denomination/movement.

It’s interesting that Benson is the only one of the ex-Morling staffer group to opt for Uniting Parish ministry. “The path from Baptist to Uniting Church congregational ministry is long and hard, as I’ve already experienced,” he said. “UCA Presbyteries and Synods may appoint key practitioners to specialist roles more readily.”