Reconciliation SBC and BWA?

Great quotes from new BWA President David Coffey.

iMonk Offers an Apology worth “Getting”

For sometime I have read Michael Spencer. We have traded e-mails on a couple of occasions. Today he offers an apology that should not be missed. If the following quote won’t get you over to read the entire piece you should check your grasp of the oxymoronic.

This official apology is brought to you by Lifeway Christian Resources, Bookseller of the Southern Baptist Convention and its high view of scripture, and glad promoter of the book 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper, a description of one man’s 90 minutes at the gates of heaven and all he learned there about life after death. (A good bit of information here at Piper’s FAQ.)

Consuming Jesus by Metzger, Chapter 1

A couple of years ago I purchased a Dewalt cordless power tool set. Each of the tools is powered by the same battery. Working on various projects requires little more than slipping the battery from the circular saw and into the drill driver. The synergism of the relationship between tool and battery makes them both valuable. Separately they are virtually useless.

Everyone wants power lest they feel useless. Sometimes the yearning for power is masked behind well articulated political positions. Swaying voters, for example, becomes the ordo salutis for those seeking power. Good commercials, powerful rhetoric and an identifiable nemesis help create the potential for a landslide victory.

Power remains seductive, even for the religious. Richard Foster’s The Challenge of the Disciplined Life (formerly, Money, Sex & Power) challenges those who would be enticed to live out the desire of power from the perspective of following Jesus. We need these warnings. Some come from recent history.

Dr. Paul Louis Metzger offers a compelling look into what he refers as “historical missteps” leading to a “Faulty Order: Retreating Camps and Homogeneous Units.” Following on the work of George Marsden (Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism - 1870-1925) and Carl Henry (The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism), Metzger makes some important connections exacerbating the racial divide fostered by Fundamentaist tendencies to retreat and associate with only those like themselves. (Metzger would include class divisions.)

In fact Metzger speculates,

Some observers may wonder why Falwell’s people - supposedly rapture and retreat fundamentalist-evangelicals - would ever seek the center stage. In the end, it may be obvious that center stage was what they wanted all along.” (p.14)

These observations resonated with some of my own questions regarding my own tribe.

Recently I shared a conversation with no small influencer in our denomination. (He may object to such grandiose intimations but he nonetheless has played a role in some important decisions.) One of the subjects of our meandering conversation tended to the question around the perceived lack of respect of young leaders for our old warriors, those who secured for us a better theological environment. My reply pushed back a bit by suggesting the issue is not personal respect. The matter strictly pertains to an ethic equal to our rhetoric - an issue important to many who are deciding just what was our denominational battle about when calls for accountability are reshaped into personal attacks.

For Metzger’s purposes he considers three themes of fundamentalism growing from the privatization of spirituality, dissolution of public faith, and the loss of an extensive, overarching social conscience to be: 1) anti-intellectualism (giving rise to Bible Institutes), 2)the community’s antipathy toward the “social gospel,” and 3) the growing influence of a millennial eschatological viewpoint. (p.16) The iconic figure Marsen points to is Dwight L. Moody. The revivalist preaching that downplayed education to avoid modern theology and played up a dispensational theology,

. . . . not only championed a biblical hermeneutic of discontinutiy and separation; it was also used at times to champion detachment and disengagement from the broader cultural sphere in terms of learning and life. (p.19)

Avoiding the likes of Walter Rauschenbusch’s “social gospel” continues the long affinity to avoid the alleged slippery slope,

Many within the fundamentalist movement were no doubt concerned about falling victim to “guilt by association”; that is one could easily be charged with gong down the path of liberalism by showing signs of social consciousness and conscience. Fundamentalist critics of social activism could make use of the social gospel for their “slippery slope” claim that social activism leads to liberalism (Marsden.p.92)(Metzger,p.22)

If these themes were the precursor to Evangelical-Fundamentalism expressed today, then Metzger’s reference to James Montgomery Boice’s essay, “Our All-Too-Easy Conscience,” bears noting here:

Boice went on to say that the time had come for another book to be written, this time “The Easy Conscience of Modern Evangelicalism.” Boice was referring to Martin Marty’s claim that the most worldly people in America at the end of the twentieth century would be the evangelicals (Boice,p.44) Boice concurred with Marty’s assessment: “We have fulfilled his prophecy, and it si not yet the year 200.” Sounding a lot like William Willimon, Boice argued that evangelicals have fixed their gaze on gaining the kingdom of the world and “have made politics and money our weapons of choice for grasping it” (Boice,p.44) In addition to raising concerns about pop psychology and the like replacing sound biblical doctrine, he lamented the evangelical movement’s preoccupation with “success, wonderful marriages, and nice children,” in addition to being fixated on “numerical growth and money” (Boice,p.4)

Pastoring a local church always means hearing of the good ol’ days. Getting back to the faith of our founding fathers often overlooks the ones, “who considered blacks unfit for slavery and women unfit to vote.”(Duin quoted by Metzger,p.31)

The first chapter concludes with a hint at where Metzger will be going,

The church is a power instituted by God. It was designed with the particular mission of bearing witness to God’s advancing kingdom of beloved community through participation in the crucified and risen Christ, and of being consumed by him on behalf of the world for which Christ died. As such, that beloved community should be breaking down divisions between male and female, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, and it should be confronting those demonic forces that distort and reduce people to races and classes, to rugged individuals in isolation, people whose value lies in how much they produce and consume.

The church becomes a fallen power when it loses sight of its fundamental allegiance to God’s kingdom, when it becomes proud and autonomous and thus distorted in its use of power, seeking political advantage in the secular sphere so as to win benefits for its members, benefits that will allow them to achieve and maintain a Laodicean standard of living and leisurely lifestyle, as they are - in the meantime - reduced to a function of the state, market, and consumer culture. How then, are we to battle the Balrog by catering to affinity groups. We will only be able to conquer the Balrog when a profound sense of inclusive beloved community centered in the triune God consumes us. (p.36-37)

Re-orienting ourselves to the Kingdom of God will inevitably challenge us to confront our own latent consumerism.

“Caught in the Middle” gets quoted …

Glad to read the ABP piece in which my brother Paul is quoted.

“I’m conflicted because I am part of an American evangelical Christianity that is almost entirely and uncritically in bed with the Republican Party, who will support them as long as they support capitalism and oppose abortion and homosexual marriage. Do that, and we’ll vote for  you, we’ll go to war with you, we’ll let you spend the country into oblivion, and we’ll be silent when you make sexual advances toward minor pages. And I don’t go for any of that stuff.”

For Immediate Release

June 27, 2007

ST. JOSEPH, MO — On Monday, July 2, 2007, the online conversation
concerning the future of the Southern Baptist Convention will move forward
as a group of prominent bloggers merge their efforts to provide a forum
for ministry ideas, missionary support, church revitalization, and
denominational reform. SBCOutpost.com, previously administrated by Pastor
Marty Duren of New Bethany Baptist Church in Buford, GA, will be launched
as one of the premier sites for Southern Baptist news and commentary.

Little doubt exists that blogs have dominated the conversation in Southern
Baptist life for the previous 18 months. At times, the conversation has
engaged substantive issues of theology and ministry. At others, the
dialogue has been shrill and divisive. With the launch of a newly
reformatted SBCOutpost.com blog, the chance for elevating the meaningful
dialogue and limiting the intensity of contention will arrive for all
Southern Baptists.

Intentionally designed as a bridge for the diverse constituencies of
Southern Baptist life, SBCOutpost.com will bring together denominational
executives with rural pastors and church planters, missional pastors with
traditional pastors, seminary theologians with Sunday School teachers, and
field missionaries with their prayer partners. The day has passed for
monopolies in news and information. SBCOutpost.com will seek to
supplement, not replace, the excellent coverage of Southern Baptist life
already offered online through Baptist Press, Associated Baptist Press,
and various Baptist state papers.

SBCOutpost.com is singularly unique, however, in the chance for reader
interaction and commentary, offering a forum for the discussion about the
future of culturally-informed, Christ-honoring witness and ministry
paradigms for the Southern Baptist Convention. In addition to this unique
format, SBCOutpost.com will launch with the largest aggregate readership
of any alternative news source dealing with Southern Baptist issues. The
mission statement of SBCOutpost.com is “to provide interactive,
substantive, and reflective dialogue for Southern Baptist churchmen and
women to participate in shaping the future of the Southern Baptist
Convention.”

The stated intention of SBCOutpost.com is to become the number one choice
for discussion of Southern Baptist news and commentary, and the blog
editors would like to encourage all Southern Baptist entities to include
SBCOutpost.com as a part of their regular schedule of recipients for all
press releases, news updates, and other statements as they are released to
major media sources by emailing editor@sbcoutpost.com.

-30-

The Fissure Runs Deep, or is it, The Crack Runs from Top to Bottom …

We bought our van when it was brand new more than seven years ago. The odometer will soon reach 175,000 miles. Once we paid off the note on the van we chose to keep driving it and forgo the monthly payment. Since that time we found ourselves making some necessary repairs on an automobile built not for longevity but to be disposable. Consumption of newer and newer models means a glut of “used” or “pre-owned” vehicles dotting every car lot. I could take a side road here and write about some of my family members who made a living selling automobiles new and used. But that is not the point of this post so the digression be a digression.

Back to the van. While we have continued to make the repairs we realize one day there will be a repair that would cost us more than the value of the van save for sentimentality. And, in that case you cannot get real far down the road on fond memories of trips taken in the “blue van.” You could liken the impending condition to arguments about the San Andreas Fault. It is conjectured at some point the fissure will reach deep enough parts of California will resemble Atlantis. When fissures run from top to bottom the demise is imminent. We know the van will one day reach such a condition.

One of my “minor” asides post-SBC in San Antonio may be major to some. I confess much of my perception to be more intuitive than factual though off the record conversations over the past ten years did make me more sensitive to experiences that could be termed anecdotal information. One of the glaring realities of the recent annual meeting was just how deep the fissure is or how the crack runs from top to bottom in the SBC. Un-repaired the demise is imminent. I realize that is a prognostication of the gravest order. I do not note it lightly. In fact, I think it resonates with the analysis I have referred to since beginning this blog a few years ago.

Bill J. Leonard wrote, God’s Last and Only Hope in the early 1990’s. His unpopular analysis noted the eventual fragmentation of the SBC. In many ways it has already begun to occur. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship being the most notable expression of this fragmentation is not the only illustration. Rick Warren and Saddleback may not have officially “pulled” from the SBC but they are at a place they need no denominational connection to carry out their particular interpretations of the Kingdom. They have certainly been maligned by many within and without the SBC. Andy Stanley, Ed Young Jr., Bob Roberts and a host of others surely tired of the politics. And in similar fashion they may not have “formerly” withdrawn from the SBC bur are content to let it go its own way. Lesser lights have chosen to do the same. They may maintain some small connections via long standing relationships but are wholly unwilling to “take one” for the SBC.

Apparent to me is the divide between the “celebs” of the SBC. I say “celebs” because while they would decry the reference as “Rock Stars” they certainly can whip a crowd into a frenzy by playing the “oldies to “rally the fans” to stem the tide of liberalism. They can do so as strange bedfellows. Underneath the facade of the largest Protestant denomination exits a seething longing for power. These strange bedfellows rang the same alarm as the SBC considered a motion to adopt the Executive Committee statement on the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. A friend noted a weird day when a vote for the BFM2000 is considered liberal. That is just how the celebs shaped their arguments. That is really another post too (this time I think the one about my family in the car business would be better). Some of these bedfellows would likely not “cooperate” were it not for the common perception their power in jeopardy.

Many believe the days between Greensboro and San Antonio nothing more than some young fellows in search of positions jockeying to get in on the power game. Mis-caricatured in sermons and conferences these bloggers mostly called attention to inconsistencies and questionable ethics. If we perform “drive-bys” on these bloggers we may well be able to discredit them and maintain the facade of unity. The fissure is to deep; the crack runs from top to bottom. This is no battle between the children of the resurgence/takeover hoping to see who gets the golden scepters held by entity heads. Instead, this is a fractious group living out the logical conclusions of a runamuck fundamentalism. In my previous post I noted the warning given to allowing the “boat” (convention) floating downstream. We were not warned enough about the powerful inboard/outboards that may hurtle us into the dangers that lurk upstream.

That being said, if those who do hold position without the seething for power will band together to put an end to “king” building in the SBC there may yet be hope. Run over to Steve McCoy’s blog and watch an abbreviated clip of Ed Stetzer. If you can find Morrris Chapman’s address to the SBC get it. It could well be the kind of “reformation” Richard Land spoke of - it just may not occur his way.

You may also want to check out Ben Cole’s analysis - parts of it sound familiar.

Drifting Boats … or, Fear of Losing the Ship …

Word pictures often provide a speaker with the tools to embed an image in the mind of a hearer. We often use this tool of communication to help the hearer understand a point we believe may well be missed. We may augment these pictures with common phrases intended to connect with populist caricatures to move our hearers to a desired action. Preachers who become adept at this practice easily influence the crowd. Sometimes too easily.

Denominational Commentary is a tag I hate to attach to any post. There are many reasons. One of my primary reasons - these kinds of posts are easily misunderstood and then misrepresented. The events of the past couple of days at the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in San Antonio certainly provided occasions for commentary. I may offer a couple of other “minor” asides along the way, but it has been much more fun to “Stetzerize” my blog than spend time and mental energy attempting to give my thoughts on recent developments. Be that as it may I hope to comment not on personalities but on implications; not on motives but rather something of a “hearer response.”

Populist preaching tends to whip the hearer into action by using well worn idioms. During the convention one of our seminary presidents set out to give a report by suggesting a story would help. It seems we may liken the direction of the convention to a boat used by Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Certain the speaker did not intend us to investigate every nuance of the “story” we will leave the implications of Huck and Tom leaving their boat for lunch since the Resolutions Committee did not think it necessary to bring the resolution on gluttony to the floor.

Instead we would do well to think an institution to be like a boat left to drift without a motor - something to power it upstream. The imagery of the river in the story proved to be key. Floating downstream, an obvious allusion to being carried away from the truth, sets the stage to whip the crowd into a frenzy when the speaker notes the boat is untethered. The boat may float to the left into liberalism, to the center into neo-orthodoxy, or the right into confessional conservatism/ecumenism. The warning - stay connected to truth; tie a better knot when mooring at the dock. Nothing was noted about which dock we should tie up to. Baptists’ only creed is the bible so are we to tie up to the Scriptures? Is it one of our confessions we should tie our boat to so as to express our confessional understanding of the Scriptures for a given time and place; a given cultural context?

Evidently the river is only bothersome if you drift downstream. But, riding upstream seems to change the context of the river. It is as if riding upstream, going against the flow, is not fraught with peril of its own. We could conclude the truth is found upstream. Sailing upstream would never lead to legalism, moralism or sectarianism.

The problem with this imagery is that the speaker chooses when to sail with or without the image so as to connect with the audience his desire to move them to a specific conclusion and action. Since 1979 warring is the chief image employed by the leaders of the takeover/resurgence, it is odd to use a boat and river. It seems moving from the Gospel of the Kingdom is really where the peril lies. Moving upstream or downstream holds unseen rock formations that may well send the boat in an unwanted direction, capsize the boat or dash it into larger rock formations.

What if the word picture was indeed a good word picture if thought of differently and we looked to our seminaries to help in a different way. Could it be the river portray the journey of life for those giving themselves to vocational service? It is merely a part of the larger story of God - not “the” story of God. That is, how could we help a young woman or man learn to live into the story of God as it is being lived with its winding, sometimes treacherous features. Might it be better to suggest the seminary gives the “sailor” an understanding of the boundaries - the banks within which the Spirit of God appears to be operative?

Our living out the Gospel of the Kingdom will require some leftward movement as we stand for justice and engage our cultural. We will on occasion move right as we emphasize what it means to live by the ethic of Jesus in all human relationships. Other times we will float the center where the two meet on most occasions. The flow of the river is always “toward” the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God. So we teach to participate in the Kingdom. This means we must move beyond the Kingdom as a “future only” reality. Instead we take the words of Jesus, the red-letters as some suggest, and see them as a proper way to order one’s life. This ordering is not a moralizing our way to God but rather an indication we trust not just these words, but “the” Word of Life. Repenting, changing our minds, to live in the flow of the Kingdom of God because it is there we find life and share it with others.

Words mean something. Illustrations and images hold a great deal of power. I like the image one of our seminary presidents used. I simply believe we would be better served by infusing the image with different meaning.

The day after … Stetzer me one more time … (this really about J.D.) …

Desperate attempts to illicit attention only serve to prop up the idol of self. Our need for approval quickly becomes the insatiable king to which we bow. J.D. Greear gave many a vicarious means to exorcise the demons that keep our praying no deeper than, “God, would you do this for your glory and my fame?”

I met J.D. when we both served on the BWA representing the SBC. Now that is certainly a relationship of the past - the BWA/SBC that is. J.D. and I renew our friendship either by e-mail or at the annual meeting. I heard him this evening describe my own understanding of commitment to community in a panel discussion. We then moved to the Convention Center where in poignant and provocative ways he called most we who pastor out. He honored the call of Hayes Wicker to disavow “drive-bys” and settle in with honesty and transparency. In the end the call was one in need of repeating. I found myself thinking of Richard Foster’s charge that our pitfalls run in three’s - money, sex and power.

Since you may have read thinking this was a follow on to my previous post about Ed Stetzer, know my stats did take an uptick. Rather than view that as someone looking for some negative scoop on Ed it would be better understood that Ed has something to say and is willing to say it. He ditched his “message” this evening and followed Bob Roberts with some “personal stuff” that made the late night really worth staying up for. Stetzer trooped out his mantra which I do hope so much he will continue. My one call to him would be to change his alliteration - contend, contextualize, cooperate to contend, contextualize, collaborate. If indeed we live in a day where single models are a thing of the past then collaborating seems better. Just my two cents, Ed.

Post Analysis
Positive portrayal of the speakers I heard today - yes
Use of Ed Stetzer or some derivation - 6
Use of Ed’s favorite humor schtick “not so much” - 0

Reader - we really are friends …

Cooperation to Collaboration … Follow-up Review of Joe Myers - Organic Community …

I met Jay on the plane yesterday afternoon. He pastors a church in what he referred to as a “fishing village” near New Orleans - Weswego. Our conversation ranged widely as any can when two pastors get together. The church Jay pastors received an invitation to participate in a partnership. Six or seven different people, institutions, entities combine to offer his church a resource otherwise unavailable. In our denomination we would refer to that as cooperation.

In Joe Myers’ Organic Community, he suggests the need to move from cooperation to collaboration. I have long been interested in collaboration. When Spencer invited me to help him with ETREK I was intrigued by the thought off “collaborative learning journeys.” Central to our project is the understanding we learn from one another regardless of a given educational framework - professor to student. I read with interest chapter 7 - “Coordination: harmonized energy - moving from cooperation to collaboration.“

Joe asserts cooperation is really about those in charge rallying everyone in an organization to agree to his/her plans. We often solicit input until it alters our agenda. It works something like this, a group is given the assignment of developing a theme for an entire convention of churches. Once the theme is approved the process moves to soliciting cooperation. The process disallows adjustment as the agenda has been set.

Joe describes a meeting where a group of employees have been given the impression they have been asked to serve on a developmental team - their ideas are wanted. Once at the first meeting the manager offers a three-ring binder complete with a plan to approve. No collaboration. Rather how could those around the table subjugate their thoughts/ideas to the plan already developed. People are reduced to support personnel and are ignored for their creativity, expertise and imaginations.

Jay and I discussed the assertion by some in “power” in our denomination who misunderstand the “dissenting” present in our convention. People are marginalized by the suggestion those in dissent want places of prominence without the history of service. Instead, what is really at work is an energetic group of young pastors want the wisdom of their mentors with the opportunity to collaborate with them rather than be solicited by them. I heard just yesterday of a couple of bloggers who will be rewarded for their loyalty and cooperation with those in power - they will receive nominations to serve. This in spite of the incendiary remarks often made by at least one toward those with whom he disagrees. It seems cooperation really does mean “do it my way.”

Collaboration is a better way forward. People are empowered. Imagination and creativity are honored. Learning becomes a two-way process rather than an interplay between dispensers and receptors.

Order Organic Community today.

Stetzer … (he types in the title in obvious need of web traffic :)) …

Last night Paul and I walked through the Marriott River Center on our way back to slumming it in the Holiday Inn Riverwalk - not so much. Some rent suites for the convention, some rent rooms. In the Lobby we noticed Ed Stetzer (he types just knowing Ed’s secretary will Google Ed’s name for any convention blogging material) talking with Jerry Vines and Johnny Hunt. Try as we might to distract Ed he remained focused and intent on receiving compliments about his book, Breaking the Missional Code. By the way I am glad Ed wrote this book - my copy is in the “To be read” stack in the office. I do wish some would read on the subject more widely as many who are not Southern Baptist have written well on “missional.”

We took in just a few moments with Ed as he had a friend (co-worker at Lifeway) to visit with. Ed Stetzer is a funny man - not so much. I discovered he maintains a bloglines subscription for the blog feeds he reads. He noted I did not make his list. I suspect it is that I do not Stetzerize my blog - not so much unless I feel the need for more traffic. Rather than be crushed by this news, I press on to blog. I really do care that Ed Stetzer does not read my blog - not so much.

What I do care about is how Ed Stetzer gets characterized by virtue of his associations. He took it on the chin for working with the Acts 29 Network. Stetzer does not mind noting his convictions he simply points out he also possesses the conviction he need not bind others to his conscience. Sure wish this would catch on.

I could go on and on about Ed Stetzer - not so much. We will share a meal and listen in to a panel discussion and then later hear he and Bob Roberts. Now hearing Ed again excites me - not so much. On the other hand, Bob Roberts is worth staying up late for.

Post Analysis
Ed Stetzer or variation used - 12 times
Ed’s favorite humorous line “not so much” used - 6 times
Traffic driven to my blog using Stetzer - to be determined

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