Walking Together: Baptists and Synodality 

A new book explores how Baptists might more richly embody synodality - walking together and listening to one another, to God’s word and ways for mission and worship. Andy Goodliff explains more

You might not know what the word synodality means, but a new book from a group of Baptists seeks to explore its meaning for Baptist life.

Walking Together: Baptists and Synodality takes the Roman Catholic word synodality and asks how it connects to Baptist life and what might we learn from Catholic attempts to practise it.
 
What is interesting for Baptists is that one of the ways Catholics have spoken about synodality is in the phrase, familiar to Baptists, of walking together. For Catholics the process of synodality (started under Pope Francis, reaching a conclusion in 2024, but continuing under Pope Leo) was about how the whole church, not just its bishops, might play a greater role in contributing to the life and mission of the church. Synodality is a way of coming together, of listening to one another, and so to God’s word and ways for mission and worship. 
 
Hopefully, you can see that synodality is not something foreign to Baptists, although we might not use that word.
 
Walking Together: Baptists and Synodality explores ways we might more richly embody synodality as walking together in local, regional, and national life. It seeks to both describe our way of being church and wants to encourage a renewing and learning more deeply how we might embody being disciples together. 
 
I (and my co-editors Ruth Moriarty and Paul Fiddes) believe this is something important to our current moment, something we cannot afford not to give attention to. Among us and in wider society around us there is desperate need for greater synodality. 
 
We long to see a renewal of assembling together as associations and as a Union that embraces all our Baptist churches, all our Baptist ministers, and so overcoming some of the tribalism that has emerged in the last few years.
 
Synodality is not a label, but a process, a journey; walking together is an ongoing activity that presses on towards Christ, talking, praying, discerning, witnessing as we go, with humility, conviction and hope in God.
 
The book has contributions from Gale Richards, Seidel Abel Boanerges, Stephen Copson, Graham Sparkes, John Claydon, Paul Goodliff, Derek Hatch, and Paul Fiddes, Ruth Moriaity and me.
 
You can get a copy of the book with 50 per cent off and free shipping here until the end of November 2026. Use the code CONFSHIP when checking out.
 

Andy Goodliff is the minister of Belle Vue Baptist Church, Southend. He is a lecturer in Baptist History at Regent's Park College, Oxford