Sunday, September 2, 2012: James 1:17-27
My childhood church used offering envelopes with six checkboxes on them, a sort of spiritual scorecard. When I finally met James, hiding behind Paul, I proudly showed him my envelope. He laughed.
It was called the six-point record system. In the Southern Baptist church of my childhood, the offering envelopes in the pews had the usual line for your name and the amount of your contribution. But they also had six little boxes underneath where you could put a check mark, and next to the boxes were six actions: worship attended, Bible brought, Bible read daily, Sunday school lesson studied, prayed daily, gave an offering.
Somebody at Southern Baptist headquarters in Nashville had decided these were the six things that were worth recording. Not the Ten Commandments, not the nine fruits of the Spirit, not the eight Beatitudes and not the seven cardinal virtues. No, there were six essentials of the Christian life, and bringing your Bible to church was one of them.
To show up at church without a Bible in hand was unthinkable. Some visitors once came to the service and sat down in front of us. I whispered to my father, “Did you see that? They don’t have Bibles!” He said, “Must be Presbyterians.”
