When I was a member of the Alliance of Baptists Board of Directors, several years ago, we undertook to write up a mission statement for ourselves. That Mission Statement is written in the brochure that's on the shelf in front. As we were struggling to come up with this, one of my colleagues said, Look, all we need to say here is who we are -- we need to preach what we practice. And we wrote down some things about who we are and this statement was the result. Let me read that to you -- so you can see how close that statement is to who we are as a church.

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Last month, when we had a Co-creator Team come together for four meetings, we said that identity was the most critical issue that we needed to deal with. And that identity question has two components -- one was our name and the second was our denominational affiliation. These are not new questions. In fact, they've been serious issues for us for several years. In 1998, when we came together for visioning meetings, we even created an Identity Task Group to deal with those two issues. The question of denomination, we will deal with at our business meeting in April. But we said that we will come together on Saturday, March 31^st to consider our name. We also identified a Marketing Team that we said would help us prepare for that. The Marketing Team met and came up with a process that we brought to you at last Sunday's business meeting. One part of that process was to prepare for the meeting on the 31^st, by taking a few minutes of our worship time to bring out some possibilities. We will brainstorm some names today and tag-lines next Sunday. When we meet on the 31^st, we would have done some of the work already.

You may wonder why we are doing all of this. The question of denominational affiliation is perhaps the easy one. Even though we began 50 years ago as a Southern Baptist Church and remained so for all these decades -- during the past several years, our path has significantly diverged from that of the SBC. What happened in the SBC was a well planned and well executed take over -- some would call it a hostile take over by the fundamentalist faction. This process began about 1978 and is now complete. We've had very few personal relationships with SBC folks during the 11 years that I've been here -- but virtually none in the past three years or so. And for at least that amount of time we have not contributed to their missions program. So, in fact, the statement in our bulletin is wrong. We do not contribute to the Southern Baptist mission program. The longer we keep that statement there, it hurts us because people think that we are a fundamentalist church, which we are not. We are not preaching what we practice. I am now working on getting my medical insurance and retirement funds out of there so that that will not be an impediment to making that change.

The question about the name is similar. Before 1972, when we were located at 8210, S. Cornell Avenue, we were Cornell Avenue Baptist Church. Then we moved to Hyde Park and in 1978 to this building on Ellis Avenue. At that time, we needed to change our name, and after a long church meeting we decided to drop to Avenue part and hold on to the name, Cornell -- after all, Paul Cornell was the man who founded Hyde Park back in 1835. So we decided that we should call ourselves Cornell Baptist Church. And that was fine, except that we are on Ellis! And there is a street called Cornell Avenue in Hyde Park also. Just about a month ago, I had a meeting of MAC pastors here. And one of our leaders was getting unusually late and I was getting little worried about it, because he had some responsibility in the meeting. Soon, he called on the cell phone. He was looking for us on Cornell Avenue. And I tell you, this has happened many times and to people who would come to church with us for the first time.

Now, we are a Baptist church in the best sense of the word. From the way we baptize believers to our view of scripture, from the way we consider all members to be ministers to our congregational form of governance, to our support for the separation of church and state -- we are as thoroughly Baptist as they come. But the word Baptist has lost its historic meaning. As a recent NPR report said, it has come to mean intolerant, exclusive, fundamentalist and ignorant. Again, some come to worship with us expecting us to be fundamentalists, but when they come they get disappointed and never come. And people who think more like us don't come because we are Baptist -- even though we embody all that is best about being Baptist, they don't know that. The question is what do they think about us when they hear our name. In other words, how do we preach what we practice?

The word Church, is perhaps the least problematic part of our name -- although there are a variety of alternatives to that too. Ashram for instance, was what we called the South Asian outreach ministry that I pastored before I came to Cornell. The key issue is this -- does our name communicate to ourselves and our world who we are? Are we preaching what we practice?

With that in mind, let me reflect with you briefly about who we are. The first thing that we need to acknowledge about ourselves is that we are here because God has brought us together. It is rare to have a community of people come together week after week, who are so different from each other. If we were to have chosen whom we are going to associate with, it would be unlikely that you would choose the kind of people you are sitting with this morning to associate with. Look around you. We have many sorts of African Americans, many sorts of whites and many sorts of Asians. Some of us have Native American roots, and some of us have Latino roots. We are also diverse in many other ways. We are young and middle-aged, we are students, professionals and welfare recipients, we are middle-class and low-income, we are formally educated and experientially educated, we are couples with children, couples without children and couples who have no intention of having children. We are single people. We are also heterosexuals and homosexuals. Some of us are mid-westerners, who think snow in March is good for the soul, and others of us are from California, and they would rather be surfing!

If you think about how you got here and got hooked up with this community, I am sure most of us, if not all of us will acknowledge that God made a way for you to be here today. I think it was Martin Luther King Jr. who said that 11:00 a.m. on Sunday is the most segregated hour in America. Not here! As we sang a little bit ago, we are so different -- the color of our skin and hair, the accents of our speech. But then, the song goes on to say how similar we are. because our races, creeds and genders yield to reconciling grace, we let the Spirit join us heart to heart in laughter and in tears. So, here we are, rejoicing in diversity and building community.

The second thing I want to acknowledge is that this is a community of grace. We are very aware that we are all sinners, saved only by God's abundant grace. I've seen God's grace powerfully expressed in this community many, many times over the years. But I want you recall two recent events. When Hill made a confession to this congregation back in October, I was amazed at the out-pouring of grace he received from you all. I don't think this congregation has every sung Amazing Grace more poignantly than the way we did on October 1^st 2000.

In December of the previous year, we had a fire in our building on the third floor. Johnny was living in the building at that time. The fire was an accident. Any of us may have done what Johnny did and that could have started the fire. But he bore the responsibility for how it started. That was on a Friday. On Sunday, when we came together for worship, Johnny was there, all shaken up from the experience, and we offered a tremendous outpouring of grace to Johnny and we gave great thanksgiving to God for sparing his life and this building. We sang, Bless the Lord, O My Soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.

What makes us do that? I think simply our recognition that we, each one of us is a sinner saved by only by God's grace. It keeps us humble, rather than being proud. It keeps us from judging others. It helps us recognize the beam in our own eye before we notice the speck in our brother or sister's eye. Our recognition that we are saved by grace creates in us a deep desire to share that grace with others -- because we deeply desire that everyone would come to know God's saving grace too.

The third thing I want us to notice is that we care for children and young people. It's no wonder that we have so many of them here. Over the years we've had people who had very significant commitments to educating and mentoring children in children's church, and still do. We constantly struggle with that, because our hearts our always bigger than our resources. And then, we have a Youth Group is continuing to flourish. Yesterday, we began hosting a Poetry Slam, which has plenty of opportunity to grow. And I want you to notice this: last year we baptized four young people and in the previous year five others. That's not a small number for a church our size. Our commitment to Strive, for after school tutoring and mentoring is another expression of our care for children.

The fourth thing I want us to notice about ourselves is our concern and commitment to our neighborhood and community. When we moved to this location back in 1978, very quickly we discovered that we are living at the edge of concentrated poverty. People would come and knock on our door for food. And as if we were living out the Isaiah scripture that we read, "Ho, everyone who thirsts come to the water, and you that don't have money come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without price." So we started a Food Pantry. Very quickly that got to be too big for us to handle, so we gave it over to the Interfaith Council. The Food Pantry was in our building from 1981 to 1994. And then it moved to Shiloh Baptist Church. Then in 1988, we looked around and saw that there were a lot of children in this neighborhood and recognized that education was a high value for us, so we started Strive. And loads of children have gone through after school tutoring and mentoring in this place over those years. Many and some who might not have had any chance, have gone on to college and good careers.

And then, we have come to understand that looking at our neighborhood through God's eyes requires us to grapple with issues of concentrated poverty -- and that such issues require political action. So, we joined with other congregations in the south side to form ISAIAH, which has now become MAC Chicago South to deal with local issues -- like youth recreation, creating sacred zones for public safety and holding our local politicians accountable. And we joined with congregations all over the Metropolitan Chicago area to form the regional organization, MAC, to deal with regional issues like jobs, transportation, education, tax equity and so on.

What are some other things we need to notice about who we are?

All of these bring me to one thing. We are about God's kingdom. In the passage we read at the top of our service from the book of Revelation, is a description of the gathering of people at end time when God's rule will be established. Look at the description of the people there. The passage from Isaiah is about bringing people who are thirsty and hungry to God's table. And the scripture from 1 Cor. Is about how at the Lord's table there need be no idolatry but our reverence and worship of God. To be sure we are not all of what God's kingdom is about. But I tell you, we look pretty close and constantly becoming more and more like it.