What the @#$$%##? According to a story from Fox News, Hyde Park Baptist Church, a SBC church in Austin, TX, prohibits non-Christians from praying on its campus. The church canceled an interfaith Thanksgiving service that was to be held on their campus. Their reasoning was that church officials thought “interfaith” meant different sects of Christianity.
According to the article:
Gill said much of Hyde Park’s concern was over some of the actual prayers that would take place on the premises.
“The fact that there was going to be a prayer service caused them concern,” she said. “The space for our prayer afterward, that’s what caused the most amount of alarm. That was influential in making their decision.”
Now I can appreciate that you don’t want people channeling spirits or you don’t want devil worshipers setting up shop on your campus, but it’s just a bit odd when you won’t let Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc come to your church and sit down and have a meal together, build relationships and share in prayer. Why not engage those people in relationships and build bridges and create an opportunity to talk later about Jesus and the restoration of life that he came to bring? Why not participate in a group that is trying to work together and bring peace to a city? It’s obvious the church doesn’t want to do that because they aren’t a member of this interfaith group and the didn’t send anyone to participate, though they were still invited to the new location. I’m beside myself…
It appears that the church members didn’t agree too much with the decision of the church leaders. According to the article:
there has been talk that some Hyde Park congregants were disappointed that their church decided not to provide its facilities for the event.
“What I’ve heard is that the congregation was disappointed, especially because many of them do not feel this way,” she said. “There’s a whole community that goes to this church – it’s not their fault.”
I’m embarrassed to be SBC even more than before.
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David is an entrepreneur, pastor, coach, and author. He has his doctorate from George Fox Seminary where he studied under Len Sweet, his M.Div. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and has done post graduate work in communications from the University of Alabama and the University of South Florida. He lives with his wife Brenna Phillips in Smyrna, DE. 
Wow. Thanks for sharing. They need to read UnChristian.
NP KB,
It so frustrated me to read that…