During this time of financial calamity and uncertainty, research is showing that most Americans are coming to terms with what is truly essential in their lives. What is deemed unessential in times of trial is quickly discarded. Most never miss the extras they once enjoyed in their fight to maintain the essentials because a certain clarity is developed which gets most people really serious about their lives really fast.

It can happen in churches as well as the home. When the trickle of subtractions to membership rolls becomes a mass exodus of crucial leadership, the essentials are re-examined in light of the reality. The really important questions, which had once been pushed to the side in times of excess, are now front and center in an extremity. The essential remains. What is extra goes — quickly.

There is something deeply spiritual about God’s ministry of subtraction. God often reduces before He redeems; He often bruises before He heals. It is the way of the Master. Jesus is concerned about essentials, not excesses, and He aims to make His children holy — not necessarily happy.

Trials, though unwelcome, teach tough lessons which define Christian character. In His mercy, God never allows a trial to extend one moment beyond His appointed end. Of this we can be sure. The essentials, however, become more real when tested against the extras of life, and denominations (which are really nothing more than the sum of local churches) must learn hard lessons as well.

When the gospel is clearly confessed in churches, real community among God’s people becomes a blessing for the entire city. When churches are vibrant communities of faith who are engaged in their culture, cooperation with other churches and even with denominational entities can follow quite well. Take away the gospel confession, and community disappears almost instantly. Sooner or later, denominations either become remnants of an excess past or are retained as essential for local church ministry.

The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina exists to serve local churches in ways, which strengthen the vibrancy of each local congregation to extend their reach beyond their walls to the uttermost parts of the earth with the gospel. The Convention is not simply a support system for institutions or programs as good as they may be. This Convention serves alongside the church as partners in the harvest of the Lord by answering the call of churches according to their needs — not as something extra to be endured but as something essential to be embraced.

As we approach the 178th annual session together, it is my prayer that the call of the gospel might redefine for us what is truly essential and enable us as a body of believers joined by a common salvation to courageously confess our faith together before a watching world. And that is eternally essential.

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin, which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. — Hebrews 12:1.