Huh? I thought the same thing the first time I heard it this week at the Baptist General Association of Virginia meeting.  As an outsider and a first timer at the BGAV, I asked a lot of questions and talked with many participants about the history of the Association and even more about the future of the Association, especially as it relates to CBF and CBF of Virginia. Younger and older participants alike started with, “Virginians are weird” and then answered my question.  I listened to many explanations for what they meant by “weird” and it could be summarized as this: they live with the tension that they don’t all agree, but they still all belong.  

As a North Carolina Baptist, I wasn’t really sure what to think about this spirit of acceptance.  While I was at the BGAV as a CBF representative, my own state convention officially voted me out.  Well, not me personally, but churches like one I grew up in that wanted to give to the state convention and CBF.  I wasn’t surprised when the news reached me, but I was sad.  I thought of days at GA camp, retreats at Caswell, training at Meredith (not to mention my NC Baptist college and divinity school degrees) and wondered why aren’t North Carolinians weird too.   Though I haven’t been a member of a church giving to the state convention for several years and I know CBF NC has brought us together, I wanted to be weird.   I know that the grass is always greener, but I know that where Virginians have an understanding, we (in NC) have a problem.  And now churches across my state are faced with decisions they have tried to avoid.  For some it will cause clarity of purpose and vision, but for others it will cause division and strife.  

I hope that as we move forward as North Carolina Baptists, we will to look to the example of our neighbors to the north and allow our churches to be places where we don’t all have to agree but where we still all belong.