Convention Countdown: Day -2

Today we continue our journey through the three issues that I feel will be important at this year’s Convention

Issue #3: seminaries and the future of the SBC

Issue #2: Tensions between perspectives on the faith

As I sat down to write this post, I first checked Baptist Press to see what articles had been posted. You can’t imagine my surprise and shock when the lead story is about the largest Christian radio network in the Midwest dumping a program featuring Mark Driscoll! Turns out Mark has been a bad boy and said some risque things in Edinburgh. When Baptist Press has to start their article with a Editor’s Note about explicit sexual content, you know that something MAJOR has gone down!

The issue underlying this is not really about crude language…well, not entirely. It is about the deeper, trans-biblical acculturation that we in the American church engage in and feud about regularly. Soteriologically, we are divided into at least three camps: Calvinists, non-Calvinists, and anti-Calvinists (sarcasm alert: I always enjoy when we in the Christian community can be against yet another thing!). Ecclesiologically, we kick out pastors over feuds about church leadership veiled in the elders vs. deacons debate. Pragmatically we deprive new church plants of support because their practical theology violates our teetotaling sensibilities. It even turns out the the movement de jour is also an arena of in-fighting among the power camps! And I am tired of it!

Perhaps I am naive to think that the largest Protestant denomination in the United States might actually try to work together and get along for the Gospel and the Kingdom. Perhaps I am short-sighted to think we could, at least on these non-essential areas, move beyond our Separatist origins and not “kick at the goads” everytime someone displeases us. Of course I also believe that local churches shouldn’t fight over the color of carpets or worship music selections!

Into this fray, I plan to propose a motion to form a reconciliation committee to address the first fracturing issue (soteriological disagreement). If that works (please hold your laughter for the end of the post!), I might work toward the next two in the coming years.

However, this motion is the last (of four) that I have planned to present…and I might not present it at all if the business sessions seem too full of GCR committee plans or in-fighting over the language of congratulatory resolutions. I also need to see the response to my first three and more controversial motions….for all I know, I might be stripped of my messenger credentials, put before the thousands of retirees and three-piece-suit-wearing-preacher-boys, and tarred and feathered!

Convention Countdown: Day -3

Well, it’s almost convention time and that means (at least this year) a preview of some issues that I think will be important this year…if only because I am making motions concerning them!

Issue #3: seminaries and the future of the SBC

I’m not trying to be selfish here (although helping the seminaries does help me, a seminary student!), but there are definite reasons why we might want to focus on this area in the near (read: immediate) future:

1. Demographic decline in young members and baptisms
2. Purported loss of young leadership to attrition
3. Tensions between the young innovators and the older status quo seekers

Some solutions/responses:

1. This year, seminarians in attendance at this year’s Convention will be recognized during the first Executive Committee report:

This is the text from an email sent out by John Kyle, on behalf of the Executive Committee:

During the upcoming meeting of the SBC in Louisville, as part of our Executive Committee report, we are planning to recognize seminary students who are in attendance. The focus of our report this year is the fruit of our cooperative efforts and people like you who are following God’s call to serve as pastors, church planters, missionaries, and other ministry leaders, are part of this fruit. Part 1 of our report is Tuesday morning and I would like to invite you to participate. We have reserved a block on seats at the front of the room on the right side of the stage. During our report, we’re going to ask that all the seminary students in that section rise, come forward, and stand in front of the platform. We will then extend an invitation to pastors, and other messengers, to come and surround the students. Following a song, we will have a special time of prayer asking God to bless you, empower you, and make you fruitful as you serve Him. Following the prayer you can return to your seat. It is our hope that this will be a meaningful time for you and for those in attendance.… I’m hoping we can have over 100 students participate therefore, if you know of other students who will be at the convention, please forward this invitation.

I am very appreciative of the effort to recognize the future of the Convention…and I hope that the Midwestern cohort (my group) will at least be second-highest in attendance. Perhaps we should continue this practice even when the Convention is not in the city of a major seminary! Perhaps we should subsidize (not ExComm, but willing pastors and churches) the travel expenses of the seminary students in your area to go to Convention each year.

2. Efforts (on my own part) to normalize seminary allocations:

• revival of an effort to have a seminary offering (inspired by this post)
• a motion to count where seminary students come from, so that the states can know how to help supplement the seminary budgets or direct their scholarship funds
• a motion to include extension site FTE’s into the allocation formula: this both smooths out inter-campus transitions like the one occuring at Golden Gate and catastrophic loss of campus facilities such as New Orleans in 2004. Also it modernizes the funding method to fit the more regional, less centralized seminary structure of the modern day.

I hope that others will give their input and ideas at the Convention this year. If you will be there, I’ll present these two motions at the afternoon and evening business sessions on Tuesday…be there to see me on the Jumbotron!

Something more wholesome and kind!

Having heard no pushback on any kind from my last post, I have gathered that:

1) we are all in agreement, or

2) no one is reading this…:(

Nonetheless, I am certain that someday, I will be searched for on the internet and this blog will be found and then skimmed with the proverbil finetooth comb for errors against whomever

Thus let me balance out my ire with saccharine kindness.

I planted three apple trees that I had raised from seeds (Some people keep dogs as pets…I keep germinating seedlings!) behind my mother’s house last August. One has done very well and is as tall as the (uncut) grass around it. The other two are hanging on…one of them barely (the ribbon I tied to it so I could find it again has actually bent it over!)

What moral/societal lesson can we derive from this? Life is more than “bloom where you’re planted” and “just hang it there!” Given the same circumstances, some will abundantly succeed, some will tread water, and some will live on the edge of oblivion. Which, I think, is one of the intended meanings of Matthew 13:8,23

8″And others fell on the good soil and yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.
23″And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.” (NASV)

The perspective is not on how much you produce, but that you produce. Some will be blessed, like Isaac, a probable referent of Jesus (Genesis  26:12-14). And some will only return what they put in…while others barely return anything. The difference between the condemned slave in Matthew 25:24-30 and the builders of the holy temple in I Corinthians 3:12-15 is their effort. We misread these two passages sometimes….the testworthiness of the temple is based on the base materials (wood, hay, straw) as the decorations are only on the surface and often “burned up”. The wicked slave gives a really bad excuse: if he knows the master “harvests where he had not sown and gathers where he had not scattered seed”, why wasn’t he afraid enough to try to impress him?

Do not worry, my dear friends, if others harvest more than you…be of the mind to harvest still!

Do not tarry at your labor..sow much seed and be an aide…help the Kingdom as you will!

Do not think of others’ treasures when there’s souls and lives to save…work until the Master calls you!

For soon the working’s over and rest will come to you

And Christ in comfort keep you and celebrate the new!

Time to get rowdy!

In the words of my good friend (and part of this year’s Hebrew crew) Kelly, “It’s time to get rowdy!” I try not to pour out the vitriol when I blog…but some issues require the sharpened tongue and the rapid-fire rebuke.

Let me begin by saying that I have the utmost respect for those who allow themselves to be nominated to denominational offices and trusteeships. Their sacrifice of time (and I am certain, money) to do this service for the Southern Baptist Convention is admirable and should be encouraged.

However, occasionally, well-meaning and passionate statements necessitate the response of those with less degree of tunnel vision about the issues. Such a scenario has arisen in recent days concerning the funding of the SBC entities and their inability to properly do their work.

I am fairly certain that this conversation has arisen as a watershed  from the recently released Great Commission Resurgence statement. I have read the statement and I agree in principle with all of its articles. Particularly, Article IX (A Commitment to a More Effective Convention Structure) has motivated us (The SBC, particularly her blog-friendly participants) to discuss what is effective and what is dead-weight in the 21st century world and church.

Therein lies the rub: The trustee leaders of  two oldest entities in the SBC have gone and made some rather ill-advised and half-thought-out proposals to remedy the lack of funds at the national level. The North American Mission Board chairman, Tim Patterson, has proposed merging the two mission boards to eliminate the “antiquated”, “duplicate”, and “overly bureaucratic and bloated” aspects of the organizations. The International Mission Board chairman, Paul Chitwood, has proposed changing the Cooperative Program formula “to ensure that the majority of money given to get the Gospel to the nations no longer gets held back in our own nation.”

Now both of these ideas on the surface are admirable. Rev. Patterson is simply asking for us to do what will eventually be needed: to take a very hard and very counter-traditional look at what each Southern Baptist ministry does and produces for the money we give to it. Rev. Chitwood is simply asking for the most money to go to the greatest need: to the lost.

However, both ideas are wrongly oriented. Both men miss the point (although Rev. Chitwood alludes to it): the problem is not the redundancy of the system (as is) nor the CP formula…at least not at the national level. THE PROBLEM IS THE STATE CONVENTIONS!

There is redundancy and deadwood in the system…at the state level. There is poor allocation of monies received…at the state level. There is a breakdown in how the Cooperative Program is supposed to function…at the state level.

Let us review the history of the CP: In 1925, the Cooperative Program was adopted with the guiding principles of:

1) equal division of church offerings between church needs and the Cooperative Program (SBC Annual, 1976, p.54)

2) equal division of funds between state and national conventions (see principle #4)

3) equal division of national money between domestic and international missions (SBC Annual, 1983, pp. 42-47)

4) funds given seen as a “sacred trust” which the states “were not to touch… for their own use” (principle #11)

I think that it is fairly clear that point #3 is being upheld…since every year, 50% of national CP money goes to the IMB. It is also clear that the other points are not being upheld!

After all the fighting over whether 10% CP giving was too high a threshold to require for participating churches, it turns out we aren’t even close to the original vision of the 1925 statement! When 36.2% (not 50%) of monies collected by the state conventions is allocated to go to the national convention, it is clear that we have a problem at the second level of trust! If we then consider the 13 state conventions that make up the core of the SBC (78.5% of combined Baptist budgets, 81.6 % of national CP budget, over 80% of SBC messengers, 83.1% of SBC members), the statistics are slightly better with 37.6% of the combined budgets going to the national convention.

In light of this, it does not surprise me that many state convention leaders were upset with the GCR statement. Admittedly, the plan has a glaring absence of “clear details, proposed plans or potential consequences.” But, with all due respect to Rev. Barrentine, it is a statement, not a plan of attack! Or is it…perhaps the state leaders fear the blue-haired ladies and the young whipper-snappers of the convention actually considering whether all those state ministries are necessary. Border states have little to fear…it is the core states, with breakaway retirement home systems, wayward colleges and universities, and convention centers that seize valuable assets who need to consider what fat they might be willing to cut to promote world evangelization.

In summary, let me add my own solution to the possibilities being bandied about: why not fulfill the 1925 vision as much as possible. Let’s start with the state conventions SERIOUSLY considering what ministries are indeed 20th century holdovers and how they can dispose, rework, or combine them for greater efficiency. Let’s start demanding that 50% of CP money go to the national convention NOW – not in 10-20 years when our 1% increment gets us there! An excellent idea (that needs to be more bold and go farther) is David Hankin’s Cooperative Program Advance Plan – coming from a state convention director nonetheless! Let’s start by increasing our churchs’ giving to Cooperative Program, as well as national and state missions offerings…and cut our own fat before we demand the pound of flesh from the conventions!

Let’s get started…it’s times to get rowdy, people!

*editorial note: Now I’m going to make some brownies…hopefully I’ll feel better after that! I relish any comments concerning this idea or the others highlighted, especially from anyone I have potentially offended…

Reflections on the “Generational Issues and the SBC”

I recently watched the “Generational Issues and the SBC” Panel Q&A conducted at Southeastern Seminary and found it to be most helpful for my own thinking about the future and the present of the SBC. I will treat the four speakers alphabetically and have included the approximate starting times (according the media player at the website) of the comments I quote.

Daniel Akin: (website)

“Bottom line: if you do that [violating a signed covenant],… your issue is integrity. Basically, you’re a liar, basically you’re dishonest, basically you are disqualified for ministry…. If you give your word to do something, then keep your word.” (63:00)

How appropriate in a day when we have a young man who chose:

1. to attend a fundamentalist school
2. to violate the covenant of that school to take his girlfriend to the prom

…and yet wants to whine and complain about their treatment (expulsion for violating the covenant he chose to sign and violate) of him!

“I am not a fundamentalist. I am an evangelical who affirms the fundamentals.” (16:15)

I have always found Dr. Akin to be a unfiying voice in the Convention in recent years. Yet again, I would like to thank him for encouraging me to move forward with a resolution to the 2007 Convention on soteriology.

Nathan Finn: (contributor at Between the Times)

“If your Calvinism precludes you from cooperating with non-Calvinists, then you would probably be happier somewhere else. But if your Calvinism is not the primary issue for you, but maybe an important issue, but you’re willing to work with other evangelical Baptist Christians who disagree with you on the doctrines of grace, then the Southern Baptist Convention is a great place to be.” (46:00)

I appreciate your emphasis on cooperation over Calvinism. I hope that others will agree to share a unified front against the powers of Satan and not let the friendly fire of theological discussions to weaken our ranks!

JD Greear: (blog)

“Good parachurchism…exists to assist the local church in her ministry…. Bad parachurchism tries to take local ministry from the local church,…thus separating it from the context God intended to move forward…. The Southern Baptist Convention was conceived in good parachurchism and over time, many parts of it have devolved into bad parachurchism.” (18:00)

I am glad that he has made a statement, recently reinforced by the Great Commission Resurgence statement (of which he is a signatory), that the Convention may need to be tweaked to be more effective. I’m sorry, state and national entities, but the years of programmatic and redundant ministry have passed. Just as we as a denomination need to trim our personal fat, we may need to reconsider if, for instance, each state convention really needs their own retirement homes system or not.

Greear later states: Take the lead (in doing ministry) and take what you’re doing to the institutions. See how fast they get onboard and those that don’t, “will probably get left behind.” (16:45)

David Nelson: (SEBTS article)

“I don’t think the major issue facing the Southern Baptist Convention is intergenerational. I think there are two issues. I think that there are competing visions for the Convention…. I think that we don’t all agree about what the gospel is. Those are two pretty big issues that divide us.” (22:30)

Nelson goes on to describe them:

Two visions:
1) those that enjoyed the CR and would like for things to be just like it was when the CR occurred:

• separatist stance: “Baptists have the way to do things”
• “Christian” subculture that isn’t and distance us from those we are trying to reach with the gospel

2) more ecumenical, willing to work with like-minded groups that are not Southern Baptist

• focused on cultural transformation or engagement
• interested in breaking out of the subcultures we have created

Two views of the gospel
“pray a prayer and get a better life” vs. “no life apart from Christ and maybe a life of suffering in this age”

Personally, I am in the second category on both terms (and I’m pretty sure the Bible is too!). I hope that the years ahead for the SBC will be a second Resurgence and not a second Baptist Civil War. I may blog on this issue in the coming weeks, depending on the ruling of my church’s elders about my plans.

Theology Ditty 11: “How is Our Understanding of God Related to History?”

Ditty 10 is lost right now – hoping to restore it when/if I find the paper copy!

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We understand God because we have experienced Him in relationship. In colloquial terms, we have history. The Bible is the record of God’s history with Israel and the early church. Tradition is the reckoning of His dealings and leadings with the later generations of the church. The experiential clothing of the basic doctrines as applied to our lives is the result of our personal history with God.

Beginning at Sinai (maybe before that at the burning bush), God initiated a relationship with Israel through miraculous signs and His words communicated through the prophets. As they cycled between obedience to and outright rejection of his revelation, He continued to interact with them and in doing so taught them and us about Himself and His desires for humanity. Culminating in the early church and the apostles, God completed the authoritative record of His direct dealings with mankind, though He has not stopped acting in human society and history.

Once the Scriptures were adopted as canonical, God began what might seem to be a more indirect path of revelation. As the Church Fathers and ecumenical councils struggled with the implications of the Gospel and the logical underpinnings of doctrine to the biblical narrative, God through their discussions, debates, and disagreements continued to reveal the truth of His plan and His character. As tradition took center stage and trumped God’s word as authority, God worked in the hearts of many to reform His church and return to the purity of biblical faith. As human society and knowledge has advanced, God continues to reveal Himself afresh to each generation in its terms and to its need through His modern-day messengers, the ministers.

More narrowly, I and you understand how God is by what He has done with and through us. As we realize our need for a Savior, we find a Creator and a Lord beyond our belief and naive hopes. Along the path of growth and Christian maturity, we find a Friend and Comforter who is more than willing to rebuke us to shape us in His image. In dark days and hard times, we find a Rock and a Shelter whose love is the strongest of nets to catch us. In all things, throughout all generations, God has worked to make Himself known through our history.

Theology Ditty 9: “What is the relationship between natural revelation and non-Christian religion?”

After more than a month of silence (working and those seminary papers really eat up your waking time!), I’m back! Hopefully, I’ll post twice a week for May to catch up for lost time….

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Non-Christian religion is simply the expression of mankind’s realization of God’s truth paired with the distortion of His nature. Man-centered religion is the attempt to adapt what we know to be true and right in the framework of a wrong answer to one or both of the questions: “Is there a God?” and “What is the nature of mankind?”

Buddhism and Eastern mysticism answers both questions incorrectly, in that they see mankind as inherently good, but mistaken about his place in reality and that they see the non-existence or palpable absence of God. From that foundation, they take the ideas that we must act rightly and that we inherently seek for something beyond ourselves to mean that by releasing our hold on this world will ultimately free us from its corruption and its limitations. Thus the East seeks to satisfy God’s demands for perfection through self-denial and meditative transcendence.

Works-based religions, whether polytheistic or monotheistic, rightly recognize that there is a God, but that our nature is such that we have the capacity to please Him and earn a life with Him in our own deeds and choices. From that, they discern that God (or Allah or Brahma or whoever) has put in us the desire to act rightly and seek Him/It. Thus many of the world’s religions attempt to fulfill the innate morality God has given us through the strictures of legalism.

Naturalism, best typified by evolutionary thought and practice, answers the question of God’s existence falsely, but does recognize that mankind is inherently wicked and violent. From that atheistic anthropology, they deduce that we act rightly because it benefits us in ever-increasing circles of influence with concomitantly decreasing benefit to us. So the rationalist view is that we are moral people because our biology (our extended desire to survive through reproduction) leads us to behave that way.

Theology Ditty 8: “What are the Sources of Natural Revelation?”

Natural revelation, that is the way that we know God and His nature apart from Scripture, is found in four locations. We find God’s providence for His own in the balance of creation. We find God’s nature in the order of the universe. We find God’s character in the uniqueness of human nature. We find God’s love in society and the
family.

When one looks at the complexity of relationships within nature, how every organism at some level is dependent and interrelated to every other, we find that God provides for His creation. He has ensured that every being made is taken care of, that they are fed and sheltered, that they have all that they need to live as He plans (Matthew 6:25-31). This providence is apparent to all men, even when they choose to see it as the result of evolution or natural processes.

The universe, in its simplicity of processes (that the same forces acts at all levels of scale and time) and its complexity of form (molecules, galaxies, and so forth, belies a orderliness that should strikes us as odd. That we find structure and organization as commonplace, even routine, in our world should tell us that we do not live in such a random universe after all. We perceive God as not arbitrary or incomprehensible, but desiring and providing order and ease of understanding.

In the human experience, we discover how God is by His nature and how we are to relate to Him. As with Adam, we instinctively know that we are different from other animals – we see that we are special. We then deduce that a Creator that seeks order and provides for His own is not unlike we are, that we share some characteristics with God. From the love of the family and the structures we find and support in larger society, we learn next how God relates to us, as Father and Lord.

Theology Ditty 7: “Is Natural Revelation Enough to Save a Person?”

No, natural revelation is insufficient to save someone because it lacks the ability to reveal in whom that person must rely for salvation. While creation testifies to the goodness and ultimate existence of God, it does not speak to His plan of salvation as such. This might be explained as the result of creation, apart from mankind, not being in active rebellion to Him and thus not needing His salvation.

What is needed to be saved is the knowledge of the saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ two millennia ago. This was difficult for the people living proximate to him to understand (thus a reason for the resistance of the Pharisees and the Athenians to accept him as Lord and Savior). This is even more true for us living today, some of who doubt Jesus’ very existence. Beyond the mere facts of the gospel, we must also have assurance that our sins are forgiven. Again, this was a difficult concept for those of the ancient Near East to rest in and more so for us today.

Without a clear revelation of how God is acting in history and in our individual lives, we cannot be saved. We need Scripture to flesh out what creation has taught us: that God exists and loves us. Without that explanation, we cannot be saved by mere natural revelation.

Theology Ditty 6: “What is the Holy Spirit’s Relationship to Special Revelation?”

Since the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer and the church is manifold, I will limit my discussion of His role in special revelation to that of the Scripture. At the time of its composition and canonization, the Holy Spirit played the vital role of interlocutor for the Trinity, guiding the thoughts and choices of the authors and the assemblers to produce the Bible that we have today. In the reading of the Bible and its understanding today, the Holy Spirit acts as the interpreter, guiding our thoughts and responses to the Holy Word.

In ancient days, as God revealed Himself to mankind, the Holy Spirit interceded in the lives and writings of the biblical authors to produce the dual source, human and divine, in which God’s revealed truth was transmitted to the people of their day and to us. Through Moses, by bringing recollection of stories passed down the generations and the common law of the civilized peoples of his day, the Holy Spirit codified God’s righteous law and its practical out-workings to the children of Israel. Through David and the other psalmists, the Holy Spirit transmitted the beauty of God’s nature and truth to us in song and poem. Through the prophets, culminating in Jesus Himself, the Holy Spirit expanded and expounded upon the foundations of faith laid down by the forefathers. Through the apostles, the Holy Spirit explained the fulfillment of all revealed truth, as well the higher call of the Christian life and the church as He dwelt within us.

Now as we read the Scripture, the Holy Spirit continues to teach and proclaim the ageless truths of God. He corrects our errors and guides our thoughts to reconcile the mysteries of the spiritual realm with the realities of the world in which we live. He comforts and rebukes by teaching us how to live, showing how we are cared for in life, and bringing remembrance to us out of the storehouse of our memory and meditations.